


Drinking sparsely

by Congar



Series: WoW Pandas [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 23:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19859980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Congar/pseuds/Congar
Summary: There's only so much a Champion can take before succumbing to fatigue. Only so many things that can go wrong before the prospect of a better world seems worth it. Sometimes what is needed is just a drink to hopefully forget the constant war for just a moment. For different reasons, but with the same goal in mind, two pandarens find another who's in the same boat as them.But what about the flag that flies above the sail?Will they dare look at its colors?





	1. Drinking

**Author's Note:**

> [ Cover image by TarableArt.](https://tarableart.tumblr.com/)

  


“Oh for Odin’s sake!”

Wrong. Damn. Hearthstone.

AGAIN!

The calm murmur of Dalaran is shattered like the chiseled glass-like crystal smashing violently against the ground in between the pandaren warrior’s cushy feet. The loud and harmonious clang from the impact is followed by a light rain of shimmering pieces drumming against the cobblestone like wind chimes in a mischievous breeze. 

Peaceful echoes ring out into the calm city in stark contrast to the event which produced them. Some would say the first major event in almost a year since the city’s been almost abandoned by the champions of Azeroth. Despite the sound being from quite a novel source, it is just one of the many arcane melodies in the streets. Heads are a turning though, albeit from the loud and exasperated roar from the slumped back head of the warrior following shortly afterwards.

All that hear feel slightly inspired by the vigorous bass, and the murmur hastens into almost a jog. Had there been a masterminded attack by some evil group they’d meet some resistance. Not overwhelming resistance against their heist, but a whelming one.

“You seem to have lost your hearthstone, champion,” the conjured head of Khadgar informs as it floats up from the fading core of the broken crystal. The blue bubble hovers in front of Aresina’s unamused face, her grimace still clearly visible despite her blood-red and large neck-guard covering her mouth and nose. She holds her gaze against the image of Khadgar’s head inside the floating bubble as it bobs up and down with her heavy breathing to maintain eye contact, waiting. Just waiting for it to-

“You seem to have lost your-”

With a rather anticlimactic, but not surprising, gentle pop, the bubble vanishes after a rather embarrassed pirouette from the turbulence summoned by the miffed warrior’s swipe like she’d do against an annoying insect.

Her head slumps back down towards the ground again, slowly and tiredly shaking at the mess of sharp crystal that she’d rather not step on.

First the Draenor garrison, and now Dalaran.

She sighs.

Third time’s the charm though, right?

Has to be, she only has one hearthstone left. The one that sends her back into the fray. A five minute shortcut has turned into a twenty minute long detour. And what waits her when she returns? More grandiose posture on how she has to defeat the other faction! More fighting inside that damn hole in the sea that clogs her nose with stinging salt. 

The warrior needs a drink.

And not a beer courtesy of Odin. She’s tired today, and going from the dim and blue of Darkshore to the bright and yellow of Skyhold will surely melt her eyes. It was bad enough on the Broken Shore with all the dark from the Burning Legion’s decor, and Aresina’s just managed to forget that before she was ordered to continue assisting in Darkshore too, but now that she’s reminded she also remembers that she set it at another in...

No, she needs another type of drink. A cheap one. A badly poured one. Mass produced and commercial. She doesn’t want any effort in her alcohol because she sure as hell doesn’t have any to spend to drink it.

‘Legerdemain Lounge’ advertises a mass produced and commercial sign swinging in the wind at the end of the street. By the looks of it it’s even more deserted than the rest of the town. Aresina can’t remember a single instance when she’s spared the place any thought. She’s been aware that a watering hole’s been there, but every single time she’s been asked about it her mind’s drifted off to the nearby well which people began diving into for reasons beyond the most arch of Archmages.

Yes, actually. Legerdemain sounds exactly what she needs.

If there’s no one inside then she’s free to mutter until her heart’s content. It’s been far too long since she’d just sat down and stewed alone in a corner. It’ll do her good to steam off some grumbles.

It’ll also spare her the awful stench of Nomi that’s pouring out from where he’s allowed to continue his experiments like smoke from a Venture Co. facility.

A low-budget Venture Co. facility. 

Who in their right mind would ever go near him again after their first visit?

//

“Nomi!”

The door to the clumsy cook is like a vertical chimney, casting out its foul smelling smoke in billows as Nomi happily bellows at his stove.

“Haven’t you-”

Weishen’s attempts at weaving away the smoke fails, and the dark clouds force their way inside her lungs like a demon trying to possess her. She forces the demonic presence out in reflex, bending forward as she hacks and hems darkened phlegm into the bend of her arm. Her eyes begin to water due to the hellish roughness attacking her, and she’s forced to evacuate the kitchen with both her large, furry paws over her veiled mouth. It does little to filter out the charred chicken and meat currently suffering hellfire inside the blackened stove somewhere inside the gaseous soot pouring out like an upside down avalanche of coal.

Mistweaving does little to help at this point. The smoke isn’t as magical and brimming with mystical potential and energy, it’s just pure mistake and failure to learn.

But that’s what mistweaving is supposed to solve, dammit!

Not here though, not with Nomi.

Not even a Grandmaster can teach him.

Weishen had every right to be confident in her teachings though. She’s familiar with the onyx fumes facilitated by catastrophic cooking. She’s done it herself back in her days. Weishen knows by practice how to easily clean off the soot from stoves. And if she can rein in Li Li Stormstout and make that little uncontrollable fur-ball sit down for more than five seconds then Nomi should just be another tick on her list. Another pupil of hers making her proud by leaping forward with his life!

That list is now sullied beyond recognition though, and so is Weishen.

While she’s always prouded herself over her raven-black mask, the sprawling swan-white filling in the blanks with blanking snow-colored fur she’s also treasured her entire life. Unfortunately both treasures are now buried underneath a thick layer of solidified soot, with only her eyes giving her face some contours. She doesn’t dare look down at her flowing dress so white when she entered to help Nomi. Not that she could see anything out of the waterfalls clouding her vision, carving deep ravines through the hardening soot.

Now that she’s cleared away from the doorway so the ice mages can try and contain the second Nomi fire of the day, Weishen can finally get some actual air inside her. Her first exhale emerges as a gray cloud akin to the rainy clouds hovering in the distant. Her throat thunders a vicious cough which dissipates the cloud.

Alright!

Alright.

Calm…

Collective…

A Grandmaster through and through, remember that.

And act like one.

Weishen’s weathered worse storms and still remained focused and centered enough to weave the mists for her companions and fellow champions. Her focus and balance is legend, taken to heart as well as fully into mind. The discipline from her training pushing away what’s clouding her mind during battle.

Be it thoughts or smoke.

Unfortunately, the long nights spent cleaning up the aftermath of the virmen raids back at the Valley of the Four Winds blossom in her head with each greedy intake of air. The soot that needs cleaning, all the badly cooked chicken and meat, and all the... AAAARRGGHH!!

The monk needs a drink.

‘Legerdemain Lounge’ advertises a whelming sign swinging in the wind at the end of the street. By the looks of it it’s even more deserted than the rest of the town. Weishen can’t remember a single instance when she’s spared the place any thought. However, it is nearby that washing service which she desperately needs as well. She can feel the soot just pouring off her like a monsoon just from narrowing her eyes to read the sign’s writing. The place looks to be far enough away for the stench of Nomi’s cooking to not reach it as well.

Yes, actually. Legerdemain sounds exactly what she needs.

With a set of fresh clothes she’ll be able to find her center again and perhaps weave away this harrowing cooking session. Weave its strings of peril together.

And toss away with the wind.

Either that or the strong and cheap alcohol will do the trick.

Both reasons are good enough for Weishen.

//

“Welcome to Ledgerdemain Lounge, traveler.”

“Ledgerdemain?” Aresina asks with one arm bent over her shoulder to grab the hilt of her sword. She looks down the spiraling stairs for a second while thinking before turning her head to look through the triangular hole created by her hilt-gripping hand and her shoulder armor. The thick spikes of her pauldron is like looking through prison bars. “The sign said Legerdemain,” she informs the human bartender behind the counter. “Looked to have space for the missing letter too.”

With a sigh bouncing her shoulders, the blue haired barista motions towards the empty balcony with a friendly, yet still tired, gesture that drags back the loose sleeve of her robe to expose her gentle hands. “We get people telling us that all the time. Arille Azuregaze is currently cleaning outside, he’ll be happy to take your order.”

The hands of humans are so strange to Aresina. If she can grip her sword without any skin on her palms to help with friction then how come the humans don’t have stronger grip than her?

Aresina follows Mel’s fur-less hand while releasing her fingers wrapped around the wicked sword’s hilt. It clanks back into its hold with a dense and ghastly moan.

“Greetings,” the high elf bartender greets with a quick flick of his hair. He folds his cleaning cloth with a series of rapid twists of his hand to show that his new customer has his full attention. Almost like origami, the cloth obeys to be molded into a small crown that he places inside his shirt’s front pocket. “What can I get you?” his classy voice asks. 

He casts a quick and panicked look at the illusionary blood dripping from Aresina’s blade before realizing that it’s only a conjuration.

For his sake, Aresina damn hopes that a high elf like him won’t begin mouthing off about vanity. Don’t want hypocrisy casting slobbery dirt on the tables and floor, now would we?

“Anything to eat?” 

Nope, that would lessen the impact of the cheap alcohol.

“No, thank you,” Aresina says while sitting down at a table overlooking the well. Perhaps she’ll catch a show if she’s lucky. With a brushing motion the warrior releases her braids from being tucked inside her breastplate, and flops them down so that they hang underneath the table. “The cheapest alcohol you got, please,” she asks as she begins unbuckling her shoulderpads. 

Arille holds his eyes on Aresina’s request for a long and while beat. She meets the elf’s eyes with her own serious ones. No wonder he’s called Azuregaze with eyes this sky-blue. Aresina’s not one to fall under an elf’s spell though. Every single time she’s been transformed for infiltration or similar occasions she’s always hated how those long and pointy ears made her hearing all...weird. Disorienting, almost. Not to mention the frail figure she found herself in. Turn around too quick and her spine felt like it would pop off its vertebrates.

And the lack of her tail was just…

Eugh!

Now she really, really needs a drink.

“You largest mug and your cheapest alcohol,” Aresina orders with her attention on the tightened belts around her shoulder. The waiting bartenders stand silent as she opens the first strap. Are they gonna be like this? Really? Before releasing the last strap on her pauldron, to let it fall and hit the polished floor with a metallic thud, Aresina forces out a “Please,” through a bouncing smile before letting go of the last strap. She turns her head over to her other shoulder before her shoulderpad has time to settle on the floor.

“Certainly,” Arille acknowledges after making sure the shoulder armor landed spike side up. “I’ll fetch it for you.”

Aresina follows Arille walking back into the building with her eyes, him flicking his wrist at the knots holding apart the silky curtains, letting them fall close gracefully. She scoffs at it before finally unholstering her sword to prop it up against the wall.

//

“We should have your clothes ready within the hour, Grandmaster.”

It’s magical armor, but alright, within an hour sounds good. Should give Weishen enough time to get her mind off what just happened, but not enough to forget that she has to pick up her laundry. She feels like she needs some of this luck after the four hours that literally went up in smoke with Nomi.

“Could you bring them to the Legerdemain Lounge when they’re done?” Weishen wonders from behind the screen dividing the room between her and the gnome attendant. She squeezes the last of the water out of her long ponytail, keeping one hand tightly around its base at the back of her head so she can slip in the two bamboo sticks to hold it in place. Acupuncture is good and all a skill to have as a healer, but Weishen’s found that it’s even more handy keeping her hair in check.

Fully skinned hands don’t really have the flexibility of quickly adjusting the friction of their grip without also loosening said grip. Holding the bundled hair between the tip of her fingers where there’s fur allows her hair to move enough to be comfortable once the bamboo sticks are in place, but not enough to become unraveled.

“Ledgermain Lounge?”

“Sorry?” Weishen asks to clarify with one of her bamboo shoots horizontally in her mouth. She makes sure not to lean too much around when turning her head, as the arcane lamp combined with the thin and ornate paper on the divider would give away a bit too much of her figure than she’s comfortable with. She doesn’t even know this gnome, after all.

Must’ve been the idea of a high elf with this thin paper.

“Legermain is the downstairs portion of the tavern,” the gnome washer explains while carefully folding the last of Weishen’s order. “Ledgermain is upstairs. Which one are you planning on visiting?”

“Oh, Ledger with a d, then,” Weishen answers as she turns back around. “I guess.”

“Certainly, pandaren.”

The smoke from Nomi’s...attempt...should’ve been cleared by now, and the conjured warm breeze advertised on the balcony should help with drying up her hair and fur. Weishen’s squeezed as much water as she can out of said hair and fur, but it still feels like she’s wearing armor.

Not armor like her own armor. That’s light because the leather is almost like cloth.

But proper armor like…

Like...

Hmm…

Weishen’s proven that gnome right.

Dammit.

She outta get that alcohol in her quickly before she scuffs at herself again.

Weishen sweeps her two unruly bangs to either side of her forehead, and finally breathes the last of the smoke out of her.

It pops a button on the shirt she was given in loan.

She sighs.

At least the attendant gnome was kind enough to give her a robe to wear above the unbuttoned shirt. Another needle will hold it in place for now. It’s only gonna be an hour, after all. The robe given to her is not as elegant as her now dark-gray one, but again, only for an hour. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s more loose than tight which she can adjusts with a couple more well-placed needles.

Ha! Who needs tailoring? Acupuncture is just as useful!

After silently muttering an incantation, she feels the familiar warm radiation from the orange crystal lighting up on her forehead. More so now with the lingering chill that hangs after a bath, no matter how warm the water is. It descends a serene composure on her mind as well.

Not quite enough to completely forget how gray the bathtub she used became after she was finished scrubbing her fur clean. It’s gonna require a shaman to persuade all that grim to leave the bathtub, that’s for sure.

But for now, a drink. 

Or two. 

Or three. 

The inn is wall to wall, so off Weishen goes.

//

Why is there a warm breeze about? Aresina went here to relax, not to heat up again.

The warrior hunches downs more over the table. While she very much appreciates the amount of damage her pauldrons has mitigated over the year, it is good to have the weight removed for now. She can tucker herself further, with her neck jutted forward and her arms folded over each other. The shadows cast from her stern brow disguises the color of her mask.

All by design. 

Like hell that either the high elf or the human will be out here anytime soon to ask if Aresina wants a refill. From her furrowed peer she can see the two tapsters talk with each other behind the bar. The blue silken curtains must be enchanted since Aresina can’t hear a word the two are saying.

If she were to guess though, they’re probably perplexed why Aresina would even ask for a goblet to drink out of since she’s a warrior.

The answer is simple.

She’s blunt, but not a brute.

It requires finesse to swing around the biggest weapons available.

Not that any mage would know that.

//

“Legermain.”

Weishen lets the name dance around in her ears.

“Ledgermain.”

But to no avail.

She can’t tell whether it is ‘Legermain’ or ‘Ledgermain’ that sounds strangest to her.

Oh well.

“Greetings, mage.”

Weishen’s unsure how to take that welcome. She understands why since she very much looks like one with the loaner robe she’s currently wearing and the city she’s in, but still…

She’ll set it right the way a proper Grandmaster does. Make the innkeeper realize the mistake on her own volition with a few subtle clues.

“May Chi-Ji bless your humble tavern,” Weishen greets back with a respectful bow. “Is the Ledgermain upstairs?” she asks, making sure to put emphasis on the differentiating letter.

“It is,” the innkeeper smiles back. “Do make yourself at home. Please speak with me if you want to stay the night or set your hearth, but if it is the Ledgermain you’re looking for, then it is located up the stairs.”

Weishen wraps her arm around her staff, sending it behind her back with a couple of rapid and controlled spins. She snatches it with a focused throw of her other arm, pointing the crystal acting as its tip up the curved staircase without looking. “This flight?”

“Yes,” the innkeeper nods without correcting herself. “Food is available as well if you want, mage. Stove-cooked, not conjured.”

“I...see.”

Weishen makes sure she’s behind the wall of the staircase before blowing up her rounded cheeks in an exasperated sigh.

“Welcome, traveler.”

At least that’s more correct than the first welcome. Weishen bows gracefully to the high elf, who bows back.

“Please take a seat and I will be over to take your order in a moment.”

“Thank you.” Weishen nods as she heads out towards the balcony with the advertised breeze tugging at the silky fabric acting as a divider. Just as thin and revealing as the one she used before. It’s a wonder Dalaran hasn’t been blown away by a sneeze with all the thin material hanging everywhere. She gently brushes away the sapphire-blue curtains the same way she’d caress a wound. The breeze outside is indeed warm and pleasant.

But there’s this antagonizing aura amid it.

//

Huh? A mage? Here? Wait, why is Aresina surprised over seeing a mage in the mage capital? Maybe here to do maintenance on the curtains? 

Or something.

As long as she doesn’t pay attention to Aresina. She hasn’t grumbled enough to be social again.

//

Oh, a fellow pandaren!

//

Oh for…

//

“Hello,” Weishen greets in her native tongue. It’s been awhile since she’s spoken it, come to think of it. There’s a resonating tickle on her tongue after the greeting, but that should fade soon enough.

Be it from talking more pandaren or drinking.

“Hey,” the warrior greets back a bit more informally with her muzzle covered entirely by the weathered goblet generating a faint echo.

A bit of weathering on the warrior too, to be perfectly honest. It’s no wonder around her sides due to the frankly irresponsibly small chestplate she’s wearing. Not even a chain mail underneath! Just a broad letter ‘V’ from her waist up to her shoulders, leaving her spotted sides completely exposed.

She’s either lucky or incredibly good for having sustained comparatively small damage compared to the amount of armor she’s wearing.

//

Why is this mage staring so intensively at Aresina? 

And why at her chest so much?

“Can I help you?”

//

Not to mention the way it barely covers her cleav-

“Hm?”

Weishen angles her eyes up to the furrowed warrior’s face. What meets her is a pair of red eyes peering hard between a folded forehead and cheeks raised in annoyance.

“Can I help you?” the warrior repeats slowly, completely rhetorical. Her tone suggest no help to be found around these parts, but rather quite the opposite. A warrior both in armor and personality, impenetrable as all hell. Weishen’s used to meeting unruly students though, and there’s a tiny glimmer of curiosity inside those pupils turned red by years of enraged haze.

Weishen’s dealt with it plenty for her more unruly students, but a warrior might prove difficult. She knows how to grease the wheel enough for it to spin despite it being a square though. Just need to find a good angle to begin weaving this warrior out of her metallic shell.

“What would you like to order?” the high elf bartender asks with the worst timing, startling Weishen with how close he came without her hearing him. “Anything to eat or drink?”

Oh, yeah. Ordering something first. Uuhhh… What do they even sell here? Is there no menu around?

“Um...” Weishen motions off-handily towards the half-empty bottle standing next to the hunched-over warrior. “One of those.”

“Certainly.”

Weishen breathes out her startle, and sits down opposite the red-clad warrior with her hands folded flat underneath her chin for support.

Now, to figure out an angle. 

//

Yeah, sure. Just invite yourself, why don’t you? Don’t ask if you can sit down or anything before just seating yourself and kicking Aresina in the shins as you hurriedly slip your legs underneath the table, why don’t you again?

Plenty of tables around that seem perfectly fine with having another pandaren sitting down on it. Not this one though. The groan the wood creaked out in pain should’ve been evidence enough that this is a table for one pandaren and one pandaren only! 

Not two.

Not to mention Aresina making it clearer than an empty bucket made out of air that she. Wants. To. Be. Alone!

Aresina hides her mutter inside her goblet and drink. The way this other pandaren’s intensively inquisitively staring is not sitting well with her. The mage sitting down in the first place is not sitting well either, even worse so. Stares she can weather. She knows why. It’s because of her choice of armor. 

As if this mage would ever be aware of the amount of chafing going on with metal against fur. Even with a shirt underneath it’s like a carpenter’s plane with each raising of her sword. 

Also her armor looks really good on her.

And anyone telling Aresina otherwise has trouble repeating that through their cracked jaw while drowning on their shattered teeth.

The way this mage isn’t bothered with doing work indicates that she might be a guest after all. Either that or payment from this lounge is paid in cheap alcohol. In which case, may Yu’lon bless Dalaran for how far it’s fallen since the defeat of the Legion.

Not literally, that is.

Luckily.

Aresina almost chokes on her drink as the startled faces of the Council Of Six realizing the city is plummeting springs from her imagination.

//

Seems like this warrior isn’t minding Weishen’s presence that much since she’s snickering to herself. This hour should pass without a second or second’s thought with some company to talk to. Pandaren company to boot, which should be nice. While she’s no stranger to pandarens around her back on the Wandering Isle, they all look up to Weishen as a Grandmaster and a teacher, and not someone of equal footing. Not lesser footing either.

Obviously.

“Should I open a tab or will this be your only one today?” the high elf asks Weishen as he serves the corked bottle and goblet. As he uncorks it and begins pouring, Weishen turns her chubby smile over to the warrior.

“Which are you doing?”

//

Really?

Can’t Aresina just have a drink alone!?

Apparently not since both the bartender and the pandaren mage is waiting for an answer from her like she’s Madam Goya at the end of a long bidding war! Well, there’s no way she’s gonna hearthstone back to the front with just one of these bottles inside her, so there’s not really a debate which answer she’s gonna say.

But if she’s gonna sit here getting boggle eyed at, and not even in an admiring way, she’ll have to dull herself pretty quickly.

//

Oh really now?

Downing the rest bottle to make a point, ey? 

This might be more interesting than Weishen first thought it would be. “Guess it is tabs for the two of us then,” she forwards to the bartender with a nod.

“Separate,” the warrior spurts after quelling a burp. “And bring me another.”

“Certainly.”

Perfect. Now lets get this show started then.

“Same here!” Weishen interrupts the bartender’s turn back inside. “No new goblets,” she adds while throwing an eyebrow and a look over to the warrior, who narrows her eyes in contemplation. “We don’t want to have them spend all night doing the washing up on them, now would we?”

//

This doesn’t sound like a mage at all. 

And not with the way this stranger twirls her staff in her palm before stopping it between two of her fingers and gently placing it down on the floor with its weight resting on the railing of the balcony. The flowing ribbons on its large crystal aren’t even tangled up despite the spinning.

Who is this pandaren?

And more importantly, what is she?

Aresina straightens her spine with her curiosity pulling back her upper lip to expose her downwards fang and allured smile. She drums for a bit with her gauntlet on the table while keeping her eyes on the smirking pandaren opposite her. All but one finger curl back into her fist, and she bounces her index finger towards the black-masked table invader, who crosses her arms cryptically in response.

“You’re not a mage, are you?” Aresina pries as she disengages her point with one last hop of her finger. She swirls the last splash of drink in her goblet while leaning forward inquisitively. “Not a priest, either.”

//

Opened up like the cork of the bottles the two are about to indulge themselves in.

Weishen allows herself a prideful chuckle.

//

“Why not a priest?” the now beaming stranger asks with a quick shrug. “I’m wearing cloth, aren’t I?” she quirks as her chuckle fades into a contained snicker.

“Because a mage would’ve hovered her staff away with arcane magic,” Aresina answers with a glance and a nod towards the crystal staff belonging to the other pandaren, “whereas a priest would’ve called upon the Light to have it float away.”

She gets an impressed frown and agreeing scoff as an answer. “True,” is all that’s admitted, and even that sounds like it’s only said to playfully mislead. “Your logic is sound, I think. I wouldn’t know since I’m neither of those.”

“If you were a shaman I would’ve felt the wind shift a bit when you summoned some to help you spin your staff,” Aresina continues with her shoulders now pushing forward her posture as far as she can without crossing the middle of the table or having her braids pull her back as they get stuck on the table’s edge. She’s getting close now. “And hunters don’t use staffs like yours. It’s not useful as a spear.”

The soon to be classed pandaren unfolds her hands and moves one of them behind her to tap at the tip of the largest crystal fastened at the top of the staff. “Feels sharp to me,” she relays while showing a drop of blood running down her pricked finger.

Bit of an exhibitionist, ey? Not exhibiting her class though. This stranger is toying with Aresina, isn’t she? Well, Aresina isn’t gonna let her have the satisfactory of secrecy. This stranger has already revealed enough that Aresina’s narrowed down the options to only a handful now.

However, the pricked finger reveals some important stuff to Aresina. Blundered your way into revealing another important clue, stranger! “You are a pandaren,” she says in triumph while slamming the palm of her hand down on the table, just weak enough to not split it in two.

Gotcha!

With a panicked yelp, Aresina catches her goblet just as it’s about to fall over from being launched up by her victorious slam.

//

...Um?

“...Yes?”

//

Aresina counters the baffled look her table-sharer sends over by throwing her opened hand in the air before going back to resting her chin on her gauntlet’s knuckles held up by her elbow firmly planted into the wooden table. “You don’t have any illusions on you, that’s what I meant. Otherwise you would have pricked yourself on your actual finger rather than on your conjured image of a pandaren. Would have explained your eagerness to intrude on my private space though if you were under an illusion.”

“For a warrior you sure know a lot about magic.” The now so-closely-classed pandaren turns her head over to Aresina’s sword with an approving smirk. “To know where to actually swing your sword, I assume?”

“Doesn’t do any good wasting an upwards slash on the conjuration of a human when it’s actually a goblin fulfilling his wish of being taller.”

“What about other ways I might have changed my form to that of a pandaren? Alchemy? Transformation? Shape-shifting?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Well there you have it.”

A pair of heavy brows sinks over the raven eyes. “I could be lying? Ever thought about that?”

“And I have other ways of telling an illusion apart from the real deal,” Aresina retorts with a haphazard shrug. “Like that faint flicker in someone’s aura when they strain themselves that shows that it isn’t their real form.” She looks down the neck of her latest bottle to see if it’s still empty. “Helped me once when a druid that owed money to a former...employer...was hidden inside a pack of wildkin.”

Empty is also the other bottle of Aresina’s table acquaintance. Still empty as she tries to shake out a few more drops than are left in it. “How’d you find him?” She blows once over her bottle’s opening.

The note played is scarily similar to the afterglow of the dinner bell in the monastery back at the Wandering Isle. Even after this long time it’s still causing Aresina to become somewhat esurient. She should get some dumpling afterwards. Those usually help with preventing hangovers.

As well as being absolutely delicious.

“I found the druid by essentially walking through the pack while mimicking the noises they made. Then it was just to head over to the one wildkin that averted its eyes instead of staring at me like I insulted them.”

With a smile that’s not really amused while not really offended either, the raven-masked pandaren raises her goblet. “Cheers to that then.”

Good enough a reason, Aresina supposes.

Arille returns with the two new bottles which were ordered by the pandaren guests. He places them down in front of each, who both thank him. “Still separate tabs?” he decides to also asks seeing the two pairs of puffy cheeks bounce in amusing unison as the other swipe their respective bottle with vigor.

//

“Looks like you’re getting close to figuring out what I am, warrior,” Weishen is willing to let slip on purposed accident. “Since you seem quite confident in your ability to deduce that a pandaren that looks and talks like a pandaren is a pandaren.” She grabs her second bottle and pops the cork with an acclimated flick of her thumb while she waits for the warrior to finish her dramatic eye-roll and accompanying dismissive huff stopping just short of spitting.

Arille leaves after catching the cork in the air since he obviously won’t get an answer out of the two anytime soon.

“I just need one more clue to be completely certain,” the warrior says while raising a challenging eyebrow. “You flicking that cork might as well been your writing it on a sign. The last clue I have a feeling you’re about to reveal it to me very soon.”

“Is that so?” Weishen angles the bottle over the rim of her goblet.

“Because I’m fairly certain your kin don’t use goblets nor glasses, now do you?”

Heh. Seems like the warrior’s figured it out. Good on her. However, it’s Weishen’s who’s won this game, really. She’ll let the warrior think she’s the victor though. It’ll do good for her mood which surely needed lifting. Weishen’s just glad to help with that.

And even more glad she has someone to drink with now.

The warrior raises her goblet, “So indulge me, please,” which Weishen clangs before lifting up the bottle of cheap spirits to her mouth, “monk.”

“I could also be a warrior like you,” Weishen sends over with a cocky grin just before the bottle touches her lips.

“You’re not.”

Oh well, was worth a try.

//

She drinks like a warrior though.

Cheers to that, if anything.

//

By Niuzao’s horns, that was some time ago Weishen allowed this poor an alcohol inside her. Her hand comes up to her forehead, and she pinches her folds underneath her orange crystal.

Just need to hold it in while the worst is happening.

“Perhaps you are a mage after all,” comes a slight tease from across the table. “Guess you’re not a brewmaster if this cheap excuse of a drink gets you down.”

Weishen exhales the worst, and drags a long breath through her nose.

“Don’t see no corporeal crane materializing to explain away your hard grimace either.”

Alright, she can open her eyes now.

“So you must be a mistweaver,” the warrior says with a hearty laugh. She extends her red glove across the table. “I’m Aresina. Battlelord Aresina.”

Weishen takes the rigid glove in her naked hand.

//

Strong grip coming from a mistweaver. Aresina can feel it tight through her thick glove.

Nice.

//

“Grandmaster Weishen,” Weishen supplies in return with a slight bow to her head. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Battlelord.”

“So,” Aresina asks as she returns her hand to her clean bottle that she uncorks by stabbing it with her exposed fang, “wghat makss a...” She spits the cork out, sending it bumping across the length of the table. “What makes a Grandmaster visit Dalaran on a day like this?” 

“I have a student here,” Weishen explains while more gracefully pouring out from her second bottle. She puts the cork down next to her consciously. No need to be rude to the bartender, now is there?

“Is it a mage you’re turning into a monk?” comes a quick follow up before Aresina gobbles down some of her poured alcohol. “Did the two of you swap clothes?”

For companionship sake Weishen pours some into her own well-used goblet. “Not exactly.” She swirls it around as she searches for the right words to use. “He’s...studying under a different form of tutorship I offer.”

The warrior’s brow sink as if suddenly tied to a large anchor. “It’s not Nomi, is it?” she wonders with her forefinger pointing from the grip of her chalice.

“No,” Weishen answers.

//

A bit too quickly.

She’s lying about that.

“You have something here,” Aresina says while scratching her brown mask underneath her eye.

“Here?” Weishen asks back while scraping with her claw on her own face where Aresina indicated. A bit of soot loosens and falls from the claw, almost landing in Weishen’s cup.

“You’re kidding!” Aresina scoffs with her balled fist pushing against her grinning mouth. “What are you trying to teach that pandaren? It would be like convincing Demon Hunters that they aren’t as important as they think they are.”

//

Weishen flicks away the small pebbles of soot from where they landed on her robe. She thought she’d gotten it all out. Ugh. She’ll probably wake up with the worst sleeping sand in her eyes tomorrow if there’s still soot hiding inside her mask.

“I believe everyone can learn despite how late they start,” she tells as she rubs her thumb and index finger together to get the last pieces of soot out of her claw before blowing it away. “It’s something I was taught late in life myself, and I teach as I’ve been learned.”

“Mhm?” the warrior retorts while muzzle-deep inside her mug.

“I was only a student for five years before becoming a master.”

Cheap drink explodes out of the warrior’s mouth followed swiftly by a series of coughs as her surprised inhale sends it all down the wrong throat.

Weishen’s hand is lifted up by reflex, waving subtly back and forth as if painting softly to summon some healing mist to mend what she caused.

The warrior throws her arm in protest in sync with her coughing. “I’m. Fine.” She extends a finger while dragging in a deep breath. It comes out as a belch not even a silence spell could stop. Aresina pounds her chest with the momentum from her outstretched arm. “Excuse me.” She takes a deep breath to make sure it’s all gone. “What?”

“I didn’t have a lot of choosing in my life before that.” Weishen taps a claw against the side of her goblet. “Barmaiden out of necessity after I left home. Not the most glamorous life there was, but it was a life. Had Chen Stormstout come visit a couple of times.” She exhales her building anger hard, disturbing her drink so much it almost swells over the edge of her chalice. “Chen Cheapstout, more like. More often than not he’d run off without even as much as a tip of his hat nor his purse.”

She drinks a mouthful to suppress the growl building up from thinking back on that damn pandaren so high and mighty and famous all over while not being capable of buttoning his shirt properly. Weishen always makes sure to be in another part of the temple when he comes to visit. Luckily he’s mostly interested in the brewmasters, so it’s not something requiring transcendence to move away from.

“Anyways,” Weishen clears her throat, “due to some...happenings...I lost my home and my job, and began drifting for so long that I lost track of the days. Then I lost track of the weeks, and then...” She sighs, her voice weaving her lament without her thinking. “Finally stumbled my way into a janitorial position at a temple that took pity.”

“I grew up nearby one, so I was sent there when my parents realized they couldn’t help me understand who I was,” the warrior speaks amid the contemplative pause. Her eyes disappear onto a horizon unseen for Weishen. “Took me a while to understand myself there, but eventually I found out that keeping balance doesn’t necessarily mean keeping yourself centered if you’re not born with it as the point of your balance.”

Is that so? Weishen would love to see that, actually.

“It was from there I could turn my anger and rage into strength and prowess,” Aresina continues after another mouthful of alcohol. “My title is dedicated to my master who first taught me that there’s a tail side to a coin’s head, and that it’s not wrong if you were born with that side facing up instead.”

“That’s very beautiful.”

Aresina shakes her head nervously, putting up her hand up to her forehead as her eyes return back under her control. “Sorry that I interrupted your story,” she apologizes after her oscillating rat-tail has stilled. “You were saying?”

Weishen is a bit taken back by this humble action by a Battlelord. It reminds her of how some of the initiates would act around her. She’s proud of her title, yes, but she doesn’t really feel like they should act that way towards her. She smiles awkwardly back as she would a spooked trainee. “Don’t worry, I needed to pause for a bit.”

“Something about being a janitor at a new temple?”

“Yes, true. I’d catch glimpses of the training and replicate as much as I could with the cleaning supplies I had. My master was a perceptive one though, and she’d give me tasks and cleaning that first seemed very strange.” Weishen motions to the railing behind her. “Like first cleaning the floors and then the railings so that I would be forced to balance on said railing with feet slick with soap as I had to squat down and polish the handrails.”

She moves her hand towards the magical broom sweeping away the cork Aresina spat out. “Or how I had to keep the bucket for my polish on the upper floor while I was cleaning the pendulum swinging back and forth from the roof.” With a proud glance back at her staff, she lets a nostalgic exhale flow out of her. “Eventually my master’s master caught on, but by then I could polish the pendulum while standing on the end of two brooms stacked on top of each other as they were swinging along in rhythm.”

//

Utter and complete bullshit.

But Aresina’s glad Weishen didn’t pry further into her own baggage, so she’ll raise her glass to Weishen’s story just for that.

The two clank their goblets together which rings hollow to their ears. Aresina looks inside her cup with a thoughtful hum which swiftly turns into a slight moan as she sees the two bottles also devoid of alcohol. No doubt no longer about Weishen being a monk.

Asresina’s not in Skyhold anymore, that’s for certain. If she were she’d have two bottles ready for consumption at either side of her.

No change in the exaggerated stories being told to her though.

“Another round, monk?”

“Sure,” Weishen answers with a friendly shrug.

Aresina whistles with the help of her gauntlet for Arille’s attention.

//

Oh for crying out loud…

Don’t do that. It’s inconsiderate. Weishen’s entire being shudders as it digs up her old memories of rude customers showing no sense of respect to her for doing her job. 

The warrior’s spent too much time in Skyhold, for sure. You don’t do that to waiters that walk on solid ground.

Or on floating ground hovering by arcane magic.

Nor waiters on backs of large turtles.

Just don’t.

//

But nobody came.

Aresina breathes in again to whistle again, this time louder, but her fingers halts just before her lips.

No, this I all wrong. Why is she doing this? How can she have been so stupid as to try and whistle?

The silk curtains! Arille can’t hear through them. Aresina’s just wasting her breath by trying to whistle. Getting this metallic taste in her mouth for nothing.

That could be from the weathered chalices though.

//

There we go, the warrior decided against whistling again. Some manners can be found even in the most brute classes. Good thing Aresina didn’t commit to that other whistle or she’d have to retrieve her gauntlet from the depths of her throat with a pair of sturdy pliers and…

Now what is she doing now?

//

Even with scooting to the edge of the table’s seat, Aresina still can’t reach the blue curtains to move them aside to call for Arille. Or can she? Maybe? Perhaps she can reach them by leaning away from her seat a bit. Just a bit more and AARGGHH!

Dammit!

There goes her back...

//

Oh…ouch.

Weishen’s seen load-bearing pillars cracking less violent and dramatically than what Aresina’s back just did. If Weishen hadn’t been looking she’s assumed that the warrior’s gotten struck with a large weapon. She certainly sounds like she’s been hit directly.

Backs aren’t supposed to imitate stepping on a dry twig, so what’s Aresina done to have her spine explode like that?

“When was the last time you stretched, warrior?” Weishen wonders as Aresina pushes in on her side with eyes thrown wide open and groan dripping out of her pulled back mouth. The monk feels her own lips curl back as she inhales through her sympathetically gritted teeth.

//

Second time this week Aresina’s gambled too much on a lean. Luckily this time she doesn’t have Odin roaring his thunderous laugh behind her.

“Are you injured?” the high elf hurriedly asks as his arm throws open one of the silk curtains. At least it got the attention from Arille, if anything.

“No, it’s fine,” Aresina informs while dismissively waving her free hand at the empty bottles on the table. She pauses to circulate some pain by breathing quickly. “Could we have another round of drinks?” she asks with effort.

A lot of effort.

The warrior can’t help but feel some slight jealousy the way the bartender leans over the table without as much as an exhale from his back not hurting as he retrieves the empty bottles along with their corks. “Certainly,” he acknowledges while bowing his head. “It’ll be but a moment.”

With him and the empty bottles out of the way, Aresina can finally put down her forearm onto the table to take some weight off her aching spine. She places her other hand where she felt her body loudly disagree with her actions, and makes sure to curl back her tongue just in case she bites down, before slamming the palm of her free hand to readjust what went wrong.

//

Weishen’s neck is almost thrown off her shoulders as she flinches back from the warrior tensing every muscle in her body from the impact of her...less than gracious chiropractic maneuver.

No...no, she can’t be constructive about what Aresina just did. She can’t spin this into a positive lesson.

THE HELL IS SHE DOING?

Idiot warrior! Weishen’s right here! A mistweaver! That can heal!

Weishen knows the stubbornness of warriors, but this is ridiculous. Not even ridiculous! ABSOLUTELY IDIOTIC!

She can’t stop the disgusted and confounded frown taking over her face.

//

Okay…

Alright…

Okay…

It’s fine.

She fixed it. Aresina fixed it.

Now where’s Arille with her liquid endurance?

“Why in the name of Niuzao would you ever do something like that?” arrives on a boat sailing on a disgusted hiss.

Aresina just needs another moment or two before she’s recuperated enough to answer that. A couple of moments, and another bottle.

“One more for me after this,” she forces out as if her soul’s escaping her after swiping one of the bottles Arille brings with him. She doesn’t even put in the effort of spitting out the cork before putting the neck of the bottle to her tensed lips. After snapping her head back so that its contents can flow free like a cascading waterfall down her throat, Aresina forces down the bottle onto the table, letting the warm numbness of the multiple mouthfuls of alcohol spread out all over her body. It has her fading away from consciousness for a moment, especially where she almost split her back in twine. The side of her mouth is held open by the cork acting as a pillar, leaving her deadened smile crooked and tasting of cheap cork.

//

The hell is this warrior? Using a paralyzing strike on a torn muscle to numb it? Weishen is not sure if she’s willing to accept that it has any rights ostensibly working. Technically it should, but technically mistweaving should work on smoke too, which it evidently doesn’t.

She needs to figure this out with another drink. Or just hope that her sense of critical thinking is the first to be dulled by the spirits. “Another for me too,” she smiles over to Arille after he serves her the bottle not swiped by Aresina.

How many are the two up to now?

A couple, give or take a few. Maybe another or so over that?

Or something.

//

Arille’s gaze bounces between the warrior detached from this reality and the monk grimacing hard to hold in the entire bottle she just emptied too.

“Certainly,” he answers.

Despite not being certain at all himself.

//

“You know that I could’ve just healed it, right?”

Aresina blinks her way back to her body, but it takes a while. She pulls out the cork burrowed in her fang, licking the taste away with her tongue as she discards it over her shoulder where the magical broom is happily brushing away. She comes eye to eye with Weishen filling up her goblet before filling her own chalice with another fresh bottle brought in by Arille. The warrior grabs the goblet first since it’s priority at the moment to suppress the lingering strain from her back. Then she can ask, “What?” 

“Why did you almost ruin your nervous system just now?” the monk almost scolds. She shakes her head, causing her long, raven ponytail to dance behind her like long grass during a soft breeze.

Aresina’s hand comes up to grab her own, but she catches only air. Her hand comes back around her chalice, drumming at it with her fingers as she nods to try and hide her hurt frown.

//

Oh…

Weishen didn’t mean for her tone to sound that scolding and angry. Aresina’s mask has almost turned as black as her own with the thick shadows suddenly cast over it as Aresina lowers her head with a ragged breath. The warrior swirls her goblet disinterestedly, not even looking at it while she does. Not looking anywhere at all. 

The monk decides upon a careful and long sip to give herself a reason to look up inconspicuously. During it, Weishen takes a thorough look over the rim of her cup at the warrior’s hair.

While she finds herself mighty jealous of the expertly braided parts down both of Aresina’s cheeks resting on either side of her vanitied chestplate like a pair of tight ropes beautifully weaved to be able to ring the most melodic bells, Weishen’s eyes settles on the exposed bundle of hair standing up from the back-top of Aresina’s head like an amber candle with a flat layer of wax at its end having run down and hardened.

It’s very much akin to a bouquet of blooming flowers held together by a gnome’s armband should Weishen actually verbally describe it. Would sound better than a melted candle. Upon closer look, while still being inconspicuous, hopefully, it could actually be a gnome’s armband holding Aresina’s hair together. Well, if it fits and does its job, then why not?

But where did she get it from?

As the warrior’s heaving sigh angles the bouquet more for Weishen to inspect, she realizes it’s more a bundle of fragmented thorns rather than blooming flowers. There’s a thin layer of residue on it too, almost like…

Ugh! Weishen berates herself for the word that first popped into her head. She’s had too much of that to last a week, if not a month! She scratches away some more of it from the other side of her mask with an exasperated sigh.

But it’s true. It does look charred.

There’s a thin layer of residue on it too, almost like soot.

However, despite Weishen’s extensive knowledge of herbology, she can’t place down a specific plant as a perfect resemblance. The fringes of Aresina’s rat-tail aren’t natural. Jagged, wicked, scarred from not being made on purpose. Cursed, perhaps? Wilted, almost. Badly cut by a novice herbalist enough to ruin the harvest, so to speak. 

Weishen’s halfway through her next savor when she realizes.

“Did something happen to your hair, Aresina?” she pries very carefully, making sure her own ponytail is hidden behind her as she asks. She doesn’t want to make the situation worse, but she’s also very curious. The life radiating out from Aresina is gone, swept away by the conjured mildly warm breeze on the Ledgermain balcony.

Pandaren prides themselves in their hair. It’s a sign of good discipline to grow and take good care of one’s hair, and is a requirement for any and all temples to become an initiate. It was when Weishen herself became officially welcomed to her master’s temple that she began taking notice to her own hair. While the males have their beards to care for like their firstborn, females have their hair that they’re expected to comb and treat with utmost importance.

So what horrible fate has Aresina’s suffered through?

“I arrived at the battle of Lordaeron with my ponytail tucked underneath my neck-guard,” the warrior begins while rustling gently with her loosened piece of head’s armor sitting next on her side on the table like a red, over-sized collar. “I had it tucked underneath my cape as well since I could tell the night before that it would be wisest decision. Skirmishes are often chaotic enough that I could use it as a distraction. Hide my horizontal back-swings with it striking first like a whip.”

Weishen offers to refill Aresina’s goblet without taking her sympathetic eyes off the warrior’s watering ones. She gets a very drained smile in return before it is hidden behind the wide metallic circle of the goblet’s underside. Once the goblet comes down to the table again, Aresina’s chubby cheeks are back to hanging forlorn, dragging her mask down almost as if they’re a pair of large burn-marks.

“A siege, however, calls upon different tactics. Different types of engagements. Different movements and spaces you’re awarded to utilize with your attacks. It seldom descended into a brawl due to the two sides’ discipline being held much with more fervor due to the importance of the battlefield’s fate.” Aresina pauses for a breath and some more spirits to lift her own.

“You have to make sure you’re providing area for your brothers and sisters in arms while simultaneously making sure the enemy isn’t allowed any opportunities to exploit your size or stance to impede your advance or defensive position,” she continues with an anxious claw tapping at the side of her goblet. “Making sure it’s clear for the back to have visual where to utilize ranged weaponry and allowing spells to easily be cast with clear targets. Both damage dealing, and healing. The priority of which spell needs more clarity shifts from moment to moment and engagement to engagement.”

Fascinating!

Weishen’s aware of how the battle looks from behind the frontlines. She’s kept it rigid. Kept it strong and sustainable by her mastery of the mists. Made tough decisions with the ranged classes to link together their pain with the melee’s to sustain blows that would otherwise have punctured a strategic hole for the enemy to exploit. She’s felt the blows, and mended them accordingly.

However, Weishen also knows that she’s only seen the frontlines from behind. She’s held it together like mortar, but she’s never been the bricks holding it up.

The wide-eyed monk surprises herself by leaning forward like she did when Taran Zhu visited her temple that one time in his mysterious darkened outfit. Shado-Pan come to recruit the best initiates at the temples. If she’d been official at his time of visit she’d gladly accepted the offer.

It’s a good thing she didn’t though considering how he acted when she finally got a chance to work with him. With her unorthodox spurts up the ranks she provided more an irritating reminder that he’s failed in finding good initiates than anything. His formalities even during leisure time did grate on Weishen more than his rigid training, and she was quick to realize why one should be wary of meeting one’s heroes.

But still, she still remembers how she’d look up through her flickering eyelashes at him, and how she’d lean so much forward to catch a glimpse of him at the communal feasts back at her temple. Although this time with her leaning forward to listen to Aresina’s story her cheeks aren’t blossoming in bashful and hopeless romance.

Wait...

Weishen puts one of her fingers up to her cheek.

Warm. 

Hm...

Must be the alcohol starting to have an effect.

“I always knew that Lordaeron had history to it, but with my feet standing idly to wait for the upcoming battle,” Aresina tells with a distance to her tone and words, “it almost felt as if it began crawling up my legs. All of the bloodshed that’s stained that land beyond what it was up until then, and on that day we’d add to it. I could see the dried scars in the ground and uneven cobble from where the blood ran through during battles past. Rivers of blood having flowed there before, dried up for years. It’s part of the land, like the large pine trees growing there. The rivers were reconstituted that day with more varied blood than history had ever spilled. A monsoon after a decade of drought.”

Weishen nods without even noticing it. She felt it too. That ominous aura of death permeating Lordaeron’s every stone and blade of destitued grass. The mists were stirring even before it all began. Choking, almost. Weishen remembers spending the entire night and morning meditating with her fellow monks to regain the focus needed. 

Haunting, the mists were.

Like smoke.

A thoughtful hum escapes Weishen’s mouth just before she savors some more of her drink.

//

“I didn’t even realize my ponytail was severed until after the fight. When I turned around to gaze upon the blighted capital I didn’t feel my hair follow my movement. It was lodged upright at the corner of my eye. I reached for it and...” 

Aresina rubs her fingers as the phantom feeling comes rushing back through her. Her eyes glaze distantly, and she tugs a scoff. “I’d dodged through a collapsing mecha falling in a pool filled with the Blight, and a wave had cut through.” 

She flicks the back of her rat-tail, knocking off a light snowfall of putrid, brown specks of hair.

“When I loosened my neck-guard on that floating ship I heard something wet and sickly thud down behind me. I spun to it only to see a long, brown tendril curling in pain. Even as I caressed it as gently as I could,” the now ruggedly breathing warrior shows by lifting her hands up in the air timidly. “The softest I’d held something in years… Even then it rotted away inside my palms until nothing was left but a foul stench and the crumbling strands of something I’d cherished my entire life.”

Weishen’s not sure if she should put her palm inside Aresina’s. It seems like something friends would do, but what if it’s too soon? And in such a delicate moment for this weathered warrior, perhaps it’ll be seen as insulting? “You have my condolences,” she says instead out of respect for the grieving pandaren. “Forgive me for being a bit forth with you, but could I perhaps offer a remedy?”

Aresina’s head snaps up to Weishen’s. “How do you mean?” she hurriedly asks through an ardent gasp. “F-for my...” Her hands comes up to hover just behind her mutilated rat-tail.

Wieshen nods eagerly with a smile. “Yes!” She almost dives into her rucksack, eagerly swimming between bottles of different sizes and shapes. They cling and clang like church bells. An almost holy sound to Aresina’s ears.

Her curiosity gets the best of her, and she stands up just the slightest on her toes to see into the monk’s possessions. One set of bottles catches her attention.

Transmorphic Tinctures?

Why does this monk have such a large stock of those in her bag?

And more importantly, for what usage?

For sale on the Auction House?

Or perhaps perso-

“Aha!”

Weishen presents a bottle that isn’t a Transmorphic Tincture to Aresina, and likewise to her relief. The monk slides it towards her over the table with a quick and enthusiastic paw. It’s not a potion Aresina’s seen before. Not healing, nor stamina, or any form of elixir she’s drunk before. The liquid inside is viscous, almost like a slime, and it swirls around as if dancing with a violently unwilling partner. It has a strange emerald hue to it, almost incandescent as the turbulence of the dance inside shifts the pigments around. 

Had Weishen not held it so triumphant and effortlessly inside her palms when she found it Aresina would’ve thought the content was boiling with a roar. And right now it’s jostling around between two of the table’s planks like of of those windup toys the next door shop sells.

“It’s a concoction brewed by infusing a prior version of the Plague taken from the Icecrown Citadel with some of the mists,” Weishen explains while putting a finger on top of the flask to keep it upright. “I’ve had help from the brewmasters since they’re more adapt to combining juxtaposing ingredients, but the alchemy behind it I’ve researched myself,” she continues with pride and hopefulness. 

//

Her face sinks a bit after hearing her own words though, and she pulls the flask back towards her chest, clutching it childishly between the creases of her cheaply lent robe. “It doesn’t work for any major wounds inflicted by the Blight, which was my original goal, unfortunately. However, I have faith in that it’ll work one day.” She meets Aresina’s listening eyes with a reinvigorated smile. “And for your ailment it might just be enough!”

Aresina takes the bottle in her gauntlet again. Even through the chained lining, she can still feel the vibrations of the swirling demanding to be let out of its container.

“I’m assuming that you’ve tried everything in your power to restore your beautiful dark-amber hair, so I’m not gonna ask further about what methods you’ve considered.” Weishen extends her clutched flask to the staring warrior. “I give this to you as a gift, Battlelord. If it works you will have given me enough back by showing that it has potential.”

Because this is what Weishen’s dedicated this later part of her life to. To heal and mend. To save people from themselves when everything seems bleak. To give them another day to explore and learn something new. A single new day can bring them the hope and future she was given by her master. She’s gonna pay that favor forward. Everyone deserves to have that one day which will change their life for the better in ways they couldn’t imagine, and she will make sure that as many as possible will fulfill their potential.

//

Aresina’s brow furrows at the flask given to her. Could this seriously be what will finally have her grow her hair back? She’s never understood alchemy. The potency to destroy entire platoons and bring down the mightiest of warriors. The potency to restore life and fortitude beyond what any training can do.

All of that dual potency stored within just glass. 

That the weeds and flowers that Aresina would slash at when she was but a cub, at the scowl of that one shaman who endlessly picked them day in and out, could not only bring out the worst or the best within oneself, but is also jailed behind a thin layer of transparency that Aresina could make undo with a single effortless tap or her claw.

She’s seen what the worst of alchemy can do. The decay it can inflict. She lives it every single day. Each night having to scrub the back of her itching neck and armor so that it doesn’t form blisters and infections from the noxious residue trickling down from where the Plague cut her hair.

It’s been so uncomfortable ever since the battle of Lordaeron. She hasn’t yet found it natural with the way her head’s balance feels without her ponytail to carry with it her shoulders’ momentum in her frequent turns. Aresina spent the first week with her head falling forward after the battle of Lordaeron.

But now she’s been given the opposite side of the alchemical spectrum as a gift from a random monk she met on a long forgotten bar in the middle of the deserted mage capital. It’s there! The remedy is in her hand! If what Weishen says is true, then Aresina’s gotten a second chance at an excuse to be alone for a couple of hours to tend to her hair. Time alone to clear her mind. Give her the clarity not to use the wrong hearthstones time and time again.

However…

//

“I can’t take it.”

Weishen’s beaming smile falls into a confused frown, dragging down her confident mask into a pair of shadowy drapes drained of luster. Can’t take it? B-but? “W-why...” stumbles out of her mouth. “Why not?” She doesn’t understand, but before she can ask again, she’s handed back the swirling flask.

Her hands are too stunned to take it.

“Many of my friends didn’t get second chances after Lordaeron. They crumbled just like my hair did,” Aresina explains with a somber voice with her arm still outstretched towards Weishen to hand back the gift. Weishen still doesn’t take it. “It wouldn’t do right by them if I forgot them like this,” the warrior adds through her clenched teeth. “I have to reject your gift, Grandmaster. Forgive me for this.”

Weishen’s no longer stunned, but she’s still not taking the flask back. Even if Aresina decides not to use it, it’s a gift to her. It’s a gift to remind that things can be better. That spring will come no matter how dire the winter was. No matter how bloody the battle, flowers will replace the thorns.

“You have a second chance though, Aresina,” Wieshen retorts warmly, again to remind. To lead into the light someone that’s lost in the dark. She knows that path. She’s been there before. You need another one’s hand to get out of it! “Take my potion. Regrow your hair and show that you’ve overcome. Don’t let fate dictate what you can and can’t become. You’re not bound to anything, Aresina. You just need someone to give you the opportunity to move forward.”

The flask begins to shake, and Aresina’s head slumps down and to the side. Her quivering lips drag back to briefly expose her gritted teeth.

Weishen gently curls her fingers around Aresina’s gauntlet to help her hold the flask up. To give her the strength she’s missing right now. “Honor your fallen comrades and-”

“THERE WAS NO HONOR THAT DAY!”

The flask explodes inside Aresina’s clenched gauntlet, sending the viscous fluid to land onto the previously clean table in thick, iridescent drops. The drops tug and pull on themselves, imploding into their own unstable infusions with pathetic wheezes. The healing mists release their grasp on the Plague, and the remaining gunky fluid drips between the cracks of the wooden table with long strings.

Weishen retracts her hand. No shards of glass came to her harm, and it seems like Aresina’s gauntlet was enough for her to not be injured as well.

Not physically, that is.

“I’m sorry,” Aresina begs, her face scrunching up into a myriad of emotions all expressive, but none taking root onto her bending mask, eyes, or mouth. She stares at her hand dripping with the potent-less liquid. “I...”

Weishen casts a glance to the second and last flask in her bag sitting atop a pile of her commissioned Transmorphic Tinctures. “No, warrior,” she replies humbled and ashamed. “I went too far. I shouldn’t have opened your wounds like that. It wasn’t my place to impose what I did to you. It is I who should ask for your forgiveness.”

“It’s...” Aresina takes another swipe at her disappeared ponytail, but again misses, “...fine. I need it to not grow back. It’s a scar that I have to remind myself.”

“Then let me at least fetch you a towel,” Weishen offers.

To that, Aresina nods thankfully. “If you could, please.”

The monk barely has time to stand up before one of the magical brooms jumps up on the table. She lifts her hands up from the wood to let it pass by, making sure to save her half-empty bottle from being swept away, and stares at the broom while it tends to the green liquid and shattered glass without as much as a hesitant thought. It’s sheer determination to brush away the liquid is admirable, and the two pandaren, just a moment ago so caught up in dread, now stare with their cheeks tensed in baffled surprise.

“I’ve...never seen one of them jump on a table before.”

“Neither have I,” Aresina replies without taking her gaze away from the broom’s bristles sloshing individually on the liquid. Her ears won’t allow such strange noises to not be under intense supervision.

“M-maybe...maybe it can clean up your hand too?” Weishen proposes curiously. “Lay down your glove when it comes back it’ll clean you up too, warrior?” She doesn’t mean for it to sound like she’s lazy, even if it kinda does now that she heard what she just said. Her curiosity demands that she at least ask Aresina to consider it, and what she then decides to do will be up to said warrior and her stained gauntlet.

//

Whatever, as long as Aresina’s glove is cleaned she doesn’t care how it is done. 

As the broom comes back from having cleaned up the far end of the table, she puts down her glove in its path. It begins feeling around in her armored palm as it comes closer, some of its rigid bristles navigating between her lined chains and breaking off, but that doesn’t deter it. When the broom seems to have concluded it’s clean enough on one side, Aresina turns her hand over so that it can get started on the other side and not continue along further across the table.

The back of her glove takes a bit shorter to make satisfactory clean, and the broom then jumps off the table and brushes along on the floor of the balcony like nothing’s happened. There’s not a drop left on the table or below it, and neither anything on Aresina’s glove.

“I’ll pay you back for the flask I ruined,” Aresina tells after she and Weishen spend a minute or so just watching and listening to the broom doing its, seemingly, uneventful job. “That and the contents, of course,” she adds after plucking off a loose bristle that got stuck between her gauntlet’s fingers.

“Oh,” Weishen piques as if snapped out of a dream. “Don’t worry about that. I have flasks beyond counting waiting for me back at the Wandering Isle. The Plague sample I have plenty more of too.” She raises a finger before Aresina can say anything. “Don’t ask why, please.”

“I’d actually rather ask why you have so many Transmorphic Tinctures in your bag.”

Did Aresina say that out loud?

Oh, she did. Oh well, looks like the alcohol is starting to have an effect on her now. The monk seems to handle her drink not as well as Aresina, so perhaps she’s far enough down the bottle to actually answer the potentially embarrassing question, and this just after she almost wept remembering the battle of Lordaeron.

She’s gonna come down hard afterwards if she isn’t careful.

“Commissioned to be put up on the Auction House.”

Alright?

//

The warrior should be careful not to throw her eyebrow so high lest it flies off her head.

“I don’t ask a lot of questions when I get these kinda commissions,” Weishen explains after refreshing her mouth. “I’ve found that it’s better for me and the customer. Through the Auction House they can make the purchase anonymously.”

The warrior doesn’t look convinced. “From what I’ve seen not even Madam Goya allows for anonymous bids.” She drinks a bit before continuing. Perhaps she’ll find some convincing words in the bottom of her goblet? 

Not likely though.

“Another person buys it and sells it forward.”

With a mechanical movement, Aresina puts down her goblet back on the table with her gaze disappearing into the distant horizon. “...I see.”

A very interesting tone Aresina just used. Curious? Surprised? Perhaps even scheming? Weishen leans herself back to get a better angle to what the warrior’s mulling about.

“The commissions I’ve gotten have been for rather...revealing armors have always been placed with rather strange pride,” Aresina tells while drawing some uncomfortably small circles on her torso.

Weishen can’t stop her eyes from moving down to Aresina’s chestplate again. The way the warrior paused in her sentence indicates that she thinks her own armor isn’t revealing, despite Weishen being able to easily deduce that some spots of brown fur on Aresina’s sides are fused together underneath her darkly colored chestplate.

Quite the juxtaposition with the size of her shoulderpads and sword, to be honest. She’s not really seen it, but Weishen has a sneaking suspicion that Aresina has some armor on her tail. Where that suspicion stems from, Weishen can’t tell. The Battlelord seems to prioritize vanity over function on her chest and head, which are the most precious spots to have some actual armor. A neck-guard only does so much against a well-placed arrow or an overhead strike.

Still though, Weishen’s suspicion still lingers about segmented plate armor over Aresina’s tail.

“Mostly elves that asks for those kinds of armors,” Aresina explains along after another drink.

“Female?” Weishen hazards as a guess. 

“Both, actually.”

Weishen’s not sure how to take that. “Oh...” drops out of her surprised mouth. Thinking about it though, it sorta makes sense.

Male or female, they’re both still elves, after all.

“Even stranger are those who commission me to make armor, but for me to wear? All they want is a S.E.L.F.I.E picture of me posing in it and that’s it. It’s good money, I’m not complaining. It’s just...” Aresina blows her lips into her goblet. “They say its for inspiration for the Trial of Style, but if that’s true I couldn’t tell you, monk. I have heaps of different armors just lying about that I’d never wear because of that. Can’t sell them off to the elves since it’s not revealing enough for them.”

“The entire pile having just enough combined area of metal to protect half a gnome?” Weishen teases with a chortle.

Oh boy, she said that with gusto. The alcohol is definitely getting to her now.

//

Don’t. Answer. That.

Remember that the best defense is a good offense.

So be as defensive as you can right now!

“Do you have the same thing happen to you, Grandmaster? Do you get commissions for you to drink your own potions?” Aresina nods not too subtly at Weishen’s rucksack. “Healing? Stamina? Transmorphic Tinctures?”

//

Don’t. Answer. That.

Remember that the best defense is a good offense.

“You seem to know a lot about those kinds of tinctures yourself, Battlelord.” Weishen lifts her chalice up while resting her elbow on her horizontal arm and palm. She narrows her eyes thoughtfully as she swirls her cup. “How come?” she asks before taking a slow savor.

“...”

A silence that says more than words could ever do. Weishen’s not gonna let Aresina sweat bullets over it though. She’s gonna be the better pandaren here and not mention it any further.

//

It’s not the most embarrassing reason Aresina bought one from the Auction House, finding out too late that she couldn’t do it anonymously, but it’s not something she’d share willingly.

It’s not like there were a lot of manicure shops on the Wandering Isle where she grew up. She had a massive fever a few days after departing from Shen-zin Su, and ‘Man-I-Cure’ seemed like the best option her fever possessed mind could come up with!

But she wasn’t a man, so...

//

Weishen is gonna continue to be the better pandaren and pretend not to have noticed the stunned silence smothering the two drinking partners like a thick blanket made out of unease and awkwardness. She shines a smile that prompts a reaction from Aresina. “So you’re a blacksmith then, I assume. Something you picked up from your parents?”

//

Phew!

Good thing the monk didn’t notice the stunned silence. 

Aresina shakes the cursed memory out of her head. She’s yet to have an overhead strike knock it out of her mind, but one day she’ll be lucky enough not to remember how scrawny and unkempt her sudden beard was.

Nor how stuck she became in her armor when her body puffed out.

Eugh!

There it is again...

“No, my parents were farmers,” she finally answers as a final resort to kick the unwanted memory back into the darkest depths of her subconscious. “I took it up after a hunter made the most flimsiest of an excuse I’d ever heard about how he’d have more use of a two-handed sword than I would. The rest of the adventuring party agreed for some strange reason, so I decided I’d be better off if I could make the swords myself so that they wouldn’t be stolen fro right under me.”

An amused snortle escapes Weishen. “Is that so? Well, we don’t all have to be destined for our professions.”

“Exactly!” Aresina agrees with a rolling motion of her wrist. “It’s also a great way to open up the pores and fur after a battle. Have the heat of the forge keep the muscles warm and the blood flowing. Then when I’m done I can just dump the basin of water used for tempering over me and let it steam all the day’s worries off. I’ve never paid for a spa since then. Never paid for one to being with, but you get my point.”

“So you do it naked?” Weishen shoots over with a teasing chuckle. “Isn’t that dangerous?” The chuckle fades away into a furrowed expression as Aresina doesn’t immediately dismiss the notion. 

“Sometimes...” she reluctantly answers shamefully into her alcohol.

Weishen lowers her cup from her lips as it proves too difficult to cleanly drink through her bewildered grimace. “You...”

“Like I said,” Aresina tries to salvage with a casual shrug that does little to help, “I have water nearby. It’s easy enough to quell any embers that might escape. Also being near the forge in my armor might upset the chained mail and create weak links, not to mention the overbearing amount of sweat going on. Having just a single layer of cloth on works better, but with the metal fumes and coal residue it seeps into said cloth which then soaks into my fur and then...” Aresina should stop explaining. She’s doing too much of it by now.

Like trying to convince a Death Knight that he or she isn’t as important as they think.

//

Well the two pandarens have a thing in common when it comes to being stained with soot, so that’s a positive.

Too much information aside, it’s very uplifting to Wieshen seeing Aresina not disappearing into her memories. It was close, and Weishen’s seen that happen too many times before, with each one being its own tragedy not only because of the situation told, but for the one telling it too. Having to live in peace with the past is difficult when the past wants to wage constant war on the mind. It’s one of the few things Weishen can’t heal, despite her best efforts and dedication to her craft and profession. That she managed to steer the warrior away brings her warmth. 

Again though, at this point it’s most likely the alcohol, but if it is, then Weishen won’t have trouble convincing herself that it isn’t. 

Especially not after another round!

Which Arille seems to have figured out by now, as he again emerges from behind the blue silk curtains with his even bluer eyes to switch out the bottles.

This time around, Aresina is the one that offers to top the goblets off.

“I picked up herbology...” 

Aresina almost overfills Weishen’s cup as she tilts her giggling face up to meet Weishen’s equally amused face, pausing just for a brief moment to be shocked for a second as her goblet’s about to overflow. Aresina stops pouring in the nick of time, and fills up her own cup a bit less fully. Weishen sips away some of her barely contained drink before she clanks hers with Aresina’s.

“I began learning herbology,” the monk tries again, only having a snicker interrupt her this time around, “after my graduation from my temple. I’d always seek out some wild flowers to use for the tables I was tending to years pasts, and when I was a janitor at the temple I’d also seek them out to give the sleeping quarters a fresh smell during the evenings. My master usually requested flowers grown on the most difficult to climb hills as part of my secret training.”

“I enjoy making the flower-halos during the Midsummer Fire Festival,” Aresina says to fills the silence made by Weishen taking a slight pause to drink. “Even though they fall apart after just one dance,” Aresina reveals bashfully like a cub. “I’m not one for a delicate touch.”

Weishen can’t help herself. The image of the Battlelord, a most powerful warrior that’s proven herself with both valor and honor to Odin and sieges and skirmishes all over Azeroth. With more numerous scars than the soil below her once a battle is finished and done.

In a blossoming halo gently pushing down on her rounded ears as if given a gingerly pet by her mother is…

It’s too…

Weishen folds over the table with both her arms curling underneath her forehead to hold up her guffawing torso and head.

She’s gone now. 

The alcohol’s won.

And she’s gonna ride it out with a smile on her face until the very end!

//

Laugh all you want, Grandmaster.

Because you’ll never be as cute as Aresina is when she’s wearing her flower-halo while she dances around that decorated pole.

Dancing with death is good and all since Aresina gets to lead most of the time, but dancing without care is good too. Just as much footwork with the added caveat of being surrounded by laughter instead of cries. 

Good as motivator as always to think back to why she’s fighting.

And to have another gulp of drink.

“I’m...” Weishen pushes her head into her raised hand to catch herself from bending over again. It almost misses her face. “I’m so sorry, warrior. I wasn’t prepared for the mental picture, that’s-” She interrupts herself as she reminds herself of it briefly. “That’s all,” she finishes while covering her giggling mouth.

Still just all jealousy to Aresina’s ears. Her rounded, fluffy ears gently pushed down by a flowery halo so colorful. She’s not gonna let Weishen get away with her actions so lightly though. The monk dares to laugh when Aresina reveals her secrets? Even if she’s laughing with Aresina instead of at Aresina? Oh no, that won’t fly. 

As Aresina gleefully inhales another large mouthful of alcohol, she realizes that it might be starting to have an effect on her. Judging by Weishen’s bright cheeks though Aresina is only playing catch up by now. 

Perhaps another round then?

Before Aresina can even risk turning around she’s greeted by the fair skinned hand of Arille swapping out her and Weishen’s bottles. 

“Thanks,” Aresina nods after a hiccup. She swivels her aloof head over to Weishen who pours her glass full again while resting her slumped head on her outstretched arm. It’s a bit difficult deciphering where the black mask on her head stops and where the black spots on her arm begins, but Aresina’s sure that the two body parts haven’t melded together all of a sudden.

And if they have she’s got a big sword to help separate again.

//

When did Weishen’s cup get refilled?

Oh well, more for her. She’s not gonna say no to that.

“I take it you’re more a Brewfest pandaren?” Aresina asks while missing throwing her finger accusingly towards Weishen. It instead points to the empty seat next to her. “Because...um...”

You can do it, Battlelord! Weishen believes in...hic...you!

“Because you’re a stereotype?”

Is Weishen offended?

Should she be offended?

But why should she be offended?

Because it’s true?

Or because it’s not true despite being true?

Wait...what did Aresina say again?

“What?” Weishen wonders while leaning over the table, knocking down the empty bottle with her elbow as she does. “Yes, I’m a pandaren. You figured it out before. Good job on that!” she congratulates with the most utmost sincerity she can muster. “I’m proud of you because of that, warrior.”

“No!” Aresina almost spits in her hurry. “Do you like the Brewfest the most?”

“Why?”

“Because...um...”

Oh, scary. Deja vu.

“Ah!” Aresina slams her fist onto the table in celebration, causing it to loudly groan in protest. “Because you’re a walking stereotype?”

Oh…

“No,” Weishen answers without really understanding why Aresina made such a big deal out of it. “I’m not a brewmaster. If I was then you’d been under the table by now, warrior.”

//

Really now?

“Are those fighting words?”

//

Of course a warrior would think of that as instigating words.

“Yes.”

And of course with Weishen being a monk she’d never back down from a challenge.

//

Really now?

“Then how about it?”

//

Poor warrior can’t handle her drink. She’s...hic...descended into her class entirely now. Pot calling the kettle a cooking vessel. No matter! Weishen never misses a chance to teach humility!

“Then how about what?”

//

Really now?

“You might be able to break a plank in half, monk, but I can break a tree!”

//

Gonna be a real eye-opener for her when Weishen shows that stone is harder than tree trunks with the mountain of humility she’s gonna carve up for the warrior. Why wait? Let’s begin now with the secret Aresina just exposed herself with more than her armor could ever do.

“So you do know some martial arts!”

//

...Shit.

“I...I...”

//

“Do!” Weishen finishes while throwing her arms up in victory, emptying her chalice completely by throwing the remaining alcohol over the railing behind her. “I knew it!”

//

No matter!

“I’m still not a walking stereotype like you, pandaren monk. I don’t know enough for that, and I’m glad for that!”

//

Oh that’s just precious.

“Because you hide your insecurities behind your armor?”

//

Alright! That’s it!

The gloves are coming off.

Literally!

“You see these?” Aresina growls through her gritted teeth as she clenches her naked fists with vigor. “I’m just as good without my armor as I am with it.”

//

Yes, that Weishen can agree on.

“Because you know martial arts,” she nods with a smug smile.

//

Oh ho ho ho HO!

Aresina sees Weishen’s game here.

She leans back, first a bit too much so that she’s forced to scramble for balance, but then confidently with her naked arms crossed over her chest that’s plenty covered, thank you very much. Her intrigued smile only exposes her one downwards fang, and she nods along with Weishen.

“You think you can defeat a Battlelord?”

//

Nope.

The Grandmaster knows she can defeat a Battlelord.

Weishen leans forward again over the table, but this time with her palm pressed hard down while she leans on her other arm with a splitting smirk. “If we’re gonna do this.”

//

Oh yeah! They’re definitely gonna do this!

//

“Then no weapons or armor. I don’t want to get stabbed by your shoulderpads as you cower, nor do I want to tire you out by constantly forcing you to fetch your sword after I disarm you again and again.”

//

Ha!

“Fine by me, because I don’t want to sneeze from your staff’s tassels being waved in my face as you back off like a child getting caught stealing cookies.”

//

How did she know?

...Anyways.

“Jade Forest then, warrior? It’s nice this time of year.”

//

Still with the stereotypes, Grandmaster pandaren monk!

Aresina shrugs. “Sure.” It’s not like she has a better location in her mind besides Skyhold, and her ears are still ringing from the previous time Odin bellowed his roaring laugh when she asked to have another class come visit.

//

“I’ll bring with me some clothes for you to wear,” Weishen offers as she tries to stand up. Her knee slams into the side of the table, shifting it along the ground with a loud shriek that cuts her ears as well as Aresina’s enough that her flower-halo would’ve fallen off. “Be there in an hour or two. I’ll bring with me some potions if you have a hangover.”

//

“So you don’t want to spar naked?”

Well, her loss.

//

Hmmm? Weishen didn’t catch that last part.

Speaking of clothes though. And an hour. Weishen had…she had…she had something? Or did she? Nah, if it was important she’d remember it. 

“I’ll make sure I get some training gi’s for you that are high-ranked so that your ego isn’t bruised before we even begin.” Weishen fumbles for the wall with her hand, catching her flat palm on it just in time before falling over completely. “Don’t want to reawaken the Sha Of Anger, now do we?”

Yeah…

Good one.

//

Or to awaken the Sha Of Smug.

From the way Weishen’s moving not at all how a monk should be, not even the most staggered of brewmasters, Aresina can thoroughly deduce that the stumbling pandaren before her is drunk.

Good for her!

And also Aresina’s ego is more impenetrable than her armor. High-ranking gi’s are made out of better materials though so she won’t correct Weishen about it. Aresina does not want to relive those distant days where she could smell someone else’s sweat through her initiate’s gi. 

What she should do though is warn the monk that she’s a bit close to the corner there and-

//

Owowowowowow!

Ow!

Ow…

Why is the corner so sharp? It’s rounded! How can it be sharp?

Is Weishen bleeding?

She looks at her hand for any sign of damage, but it’s still as black and white as ever.

That’s good.

Weishen’s had that color on her fur her entire life, so it’d be strange for it to change.

Wait…

The Grandmaster slams her hand up to her forehead, pushing it hard into her skull in an attempt to hold in the pain.

Oh boy, maybe she should take two of those rejuvenating potions when she gets back to the Wandering Isle. One to cure the headache from the alcohol and another to cure her head ricocheting off the wall like a lost arrow.

Now, let’s see if she can still weave the mists well enough to bring her back home.

//

Aresina watches with half-opened eyes as Weishen stumbles down on her butt, the impact reverberating throughout her bouncing body like waves on a tranquil lake. Her composure turns instantly rigid afterwards, and she angles her head back as if trying to smell a nice summer’s breeze rushing past her. With her two hands that just a moment ago couldn’t even help her catch her balance or protect the monk from the sharp, rounded corner of the silk curtained entrance into the bar, she begins weaving an invisible tapestry in front of her cross-legged position.

If Aresina’s been a tailor she’d perhaps been more able to appreciate the gestures, but right now it’s just making her motion sick. Not enough to vomit, but enough to make her feel a bit weary and queezy. Once the green mists start to envelope Weishen’s hands like a timid partner asking for a dance, Aresina’s queasiness dampers. Some of the mists seek its way to Aresina, but whether Weishen meant for it or not, the warrior doesn’t know.

The glittering fog starts enveloping Weishen, her details fading from her person with each soft motion of her hands. It’s not long until there’s just a shimmer of the black outline of her hair and fur visible inside the green cloud filled with fine, magical dew. 

With a focused exhale, Weishen’s outline begins to ripple for a second before disappearing. The mists she conjured disperses with it a scent of grass and salt water.

Aresina’s eyes shoot wide open as the scent reaches her.

The Wandering Isle…

And just like that, she’s sober.

“Wow...”

The warrior straightens her back, eyes blinking away the memories that just surged through her like thunder. Mom. Dad. Her family’s farm. The monastery. Master Shang Xi.

“I miss you,” she whispers under her breath.

Maybe Weishen knows about Aresina’s parents? She should ask when the two…

Hang on a second! 

Did Aresina really agree to not spar without a weapon or any of her armor?

She grabs her last empty bottle, angling it to read the label and the contents. It doesn’t do her any good though since she realizes that there’s better alcohol in those first aid kits than what was in there. Well it explains why Aresina would agree to no armor and no weapon, and it was her intention to get as disconnected from herself as possible, so it appears it checks out?

To her recently sober surprise.

But how many did she and Weishen have together?

“Your friend teleported away,” Arille informs as he cleans off the table for the last time. He meets Aresina’s eyes with his own piercing blue ones. There’s a hint of red behind it, which probably stems from the two pandarens saying they’d have separate tabs. “I’ll take it you’ll cover her bill?”

There’s a word he used though that has Aresina pausing to think.

‘Friend’?

It sounds…

Good.

Yeah, ‘friend’ is good.

Even more telling is the way Arille asked about Aresina covering for her friend. Not really a question. More a threat, to be honest. Aresina’s gotta save her energy for the sparring she’s apparently doing against her new friend, so she’ll pay this time. Next time it’ll be her friend. 

Weishen sounded like she was hungering for a challenge, and Aresina’s sure gonna make her more full than she’s ever been!

After all, it’s good to have a bite or two after a drinking binge!

“I will,” Aresina answers with a bit too eager of an eagerly splitting grin. To her surprise Arille already had it on his person, which he hands over with a bow.

Wow!

Now Aresina’s even more sober!

Were these prices set by a goblin or something?

Damn!

“Those high-ranking gi’s better be made out of artisan silk,” Aresina mutters as she rummages through her coin purse fastened underneath her left shoulderpad. She adds in a couple of extra gold to soothe Arille’s subtle glance over to the broom that cleaned up the potion spillage.

“Thank you for your patronage,” the high elf thanks with his voice back to its service-minded self that first greeted Aresina. “We hope for your return.”

Yes, yes, Aresina appreciates Arille’s service and all that. She shouldn’t dawdle if she’s to reach where Weishen said they’re gonna spar.

Come to think of it, she didn’t say exactly where in the Jade Forest. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the other though, right?

They’re friends, after all. Friends find each other.

“Here’s your laundry, Grandmaster.”

The intense aroma of freshly laundered leather slammed down before her on the vacated table hits Aresina’s nose hard, and she’s forced to turn her head away to cough once from the intensity of it shocking her throat and lungs. “I’m not...” she tries to explain, but the delivery gnome’s already on her way down the rounded stairs in a hurry. 

Aresina puts her paw on top the pile of almost blindingly white armor. Guess this must be what Weishen normally wears. It sure has the mystique and serenity of a monk even when folded neatly like this. Had she worn this Aresina wouldn’t have any trouble deducing her class at a moment’s glance. She should bring it with her to the Jade Forest.

Just gotta be careful not to stain it with the grass.

After fastening her shoulderpads back where they belong, and sheeting her sword with another ghastly moan, Aresina tucks her friend’s laundry under her arm before whistling for her mount.


	2. Sparsely

The Jade Forest.

Forest of both trees and mountains.

In the distance the divine bells sing their metallic choirs across the entire region, their song dancing between the trunks and hills stretching ever upwards. Like the celestial serpents who’s temple the divine bells sing from, the song moves quick like the wind, snaking along the emerald valleys like long strokes of a paintbrush.

It’s followed shortly afterwards by a harmonious harmony from the smaller temples and training grounds sprinkled across the green topography, their second voice following the same snaking paths between the wooden trunks and canopies standing in the long shadows of the rocky trunks and canopies reaching taller, yet taller, cutting through the bulbous clouds by their stalwart presence.

For whom do the bells toll?

It tolls for thee, who are strained from the day’s efforts. A toll that makes aware the tolls of the morning, day, and afternoon. Of training, of praying, of meditating, and of learning.

Or drinking way too much alcohol with too empty a stomach.

But that’s about to change.

An excited clap reverberates between the many steeply rolling mountains around the one the salivating pandaren chose out of...no particular reason, actually. Well, maybe the view, actually, but that she couldn’t have known before she landed. 

The small bell shrine above a pondering pond is also another point in the already chosen mountain’s favor, but again, that was after the pandaren had landed that she noticed it. Retroactively, this mountain is crushing its competitors.

Could be why it stands so proud above its siblings. Sure is shining warmly, but that could also be from the sun.

Maybe the pandaren should’ve rung at the shrine and joined in with the rest of the bell choir dwindling like distant rain? Too late now though. The second, third, and even fourth voice has passed by the very edges of the Jade Forest out into the vast sea shrouded in mist. Ringing the bell now would only interrupt rather than gather.

She’ll not be late with the eating though, and since that was the purpose of the bells ringing, she won’t feel upset about missing it.

The pandaren unties the large, steaming, and thin wooden package stuffed with freshly made dumplings. She carefully lifts the weaved lid off with both her hands caressing it’s circular shape, twisting it back and forth to convince it to loosen up so that she can take in its mouth-watering content. A cloud of steam makes a quick escape from its confined prison, drowning the eager smile on the pandaren’s face as well as the rest of her in vapor carrying with it the warm smell of cooked dough and seasoned meat into the awaiting embrace of her quivering nostrils.

Oh yes.

Hell yes, even.

Aresina plants herself down onto the swaying grass with her food nestled neatly on her plate-robe made taut by her crossed legs. She flips the like coin between her two claws holding it on either side before throwing the lid over her shoulder without any thought to it rolling off the mountain’s edge. Right now she’s too hungry to worry about such petty nibbles.

The only nibbling that’s gonna take place around here is on these dumplings, and even then she’ll most likely shove a number of them inside her mouth and chew with cheeks splitting from the sheer volume. Although it looks like she forgot to ask about some sticks from the dumpling stall. She must’ve been too entranced by the smell to remember to ask for a pair. No sweat though. She’ll just jab a claw into one of the dumplings. 

The heat is both seething and soothing. It hurts, yes, but it’s supposed to be this warm, otherwise the meat wouldn’t be properly cooked. With a confident flick she throws the ball of dough and meat into her agape mouth. Its trajectory is altered slightly by the spike at the front of the warrior’s neck-guard, but not enough to miss her startled mouth opened wider in horror.

In tandem with her mouth, Aresina’s eyes close as she takes the first bite of the dumpling. Its seasoned content spreads out more and more with each bite, covering more and more of her tongue. Her eyes flicker as the entire inside of her mouth is coated with the spices and rough texture of the meat and dough.

She breathes out a similar cloud to what she chose to drown herself in while taking the moment to tilt down her neck-guard so she doesn’t have to worry further.

By Chi’Ji, she’s missed this taste! The softness cause by the steam. The resistance in each bite. The meat so tender and-

“Hey!”

Her enjoyment is cut short by the feral muzzle of her War Wyrm throwing itself greedily into the bowl.

“Get off!” Aresina shouts in annoyance while throwing a disciplinary punch at her mount’s jaw. “I already gave you a goat!” It reels back from the impact, but then throws back an angry glare as it flaunts its barbed wings that it spreads out threateningly against its master. Aresina retorts with a finger pointing accusingly at her snarling mount. “You pull those back before I make a hammock with them again!” The wyrm ducks its head to bare its teeth at Aresina’s food. 

With a pull harder than what the initiate pandaren responsible for ringing the largest bell at the Temple Of The Jade Serpent did to signal dinnertime, Aresina forces her mount’s head down into the ground by the reign fastened at its curled back cheek. 

“No!”

And that’s final!

The red jaw slams shut with a whimper masquerading as a growl. “Go back to your goat leg that you haven’t finished!” she commands while tossing the reign behind her towards where she threw said goat for her mount to nibble on. It’s one from the Fields of the Eternal Hunt, and her mount isn’t gonna waste a single patch of fur on that. She punches back the miffed tail taking a swing at her as her mount walks away with heavy steps.

The swaying grass becomes completely flat as the wyrm takes an angry flight over its master, claws less than a hair’s length away from the warrior’s exposed head as it sails off into the green distant with its gifted goat leg dangling by the hoof in its mouth. Aresina’s not worried though about the close call. Her mount will come back when she whistles for it. It knows that much, but that’s all Aresina’s gonna give it. It’ll perch on a hill somewhere alone and mutter its anger off for a while and then it’ll be docile again.

Aresina halts another dumpling at her lips as she recognizes that last thought a bit too vividly. She shrugs with a scoff, and gulps down another of her dumplings with a returning smile stretching her lips from the savory oils coating her taste buds. “Mmmmmm...”

While chewing, Aresina takes a glance behind her at the folded laundry still resting on the stone ring surrounding the tranquil pond. Its splendid whiteness is almost like a pile of snow amid this summery vegetation. No flowers though, unfortunately. Aresina could’ve made a pair of flower-halos for her and Weishen while waiting. It’s not like she’s got anything else to do.

Besides eating.

Better get busy with it.

Another dumpling enters the warrior’s gleeful mouth.

And speaking of armor that isn’t plate, it’s actually been quite a while since Aresina wore something as soft and light as a training gi. She’s a bit curious if she’ll recognize the feeling. It’s been a few years now since last time she donned something that didn’t weigh her down. Won’t be as soft and light as Weishen’s clothes though, even if she brings back some master gi’s. Half of Aresina’s journey to the Jade Forest was spent looking under her arm to see if the white robe and its complimentary pieces were still in her grasp. She could barely even feel it against her fur, so how would it feel actually wearing it?

The warrior’s stops in the middle of a very loud chew, her filled cheeks and pouting lips pointing to the side as she looks between the spikes on her shoulder. She takes an additional bite while she swivels her head around to look over her other shoulder just as spiky. And a third bite when looking up.

Nothing but the blue of the clear sky and the green of the rocky and wooden forest. No Grandmaster monk sitting on a cloud or on a mount. Just the pleasant wind and some very faint murmur from a distant monastery.

Aresina swallows.

She can’t really get the thought out of her head.

How would it feel actually wearing it? It’ll be softer than the training gi’s Weishen’s on her way with, that much she is sure of. But how softer? How sturdier while also being softer?

Aresina is to take off her armor sometime in the near future when Weishen arrives, right? So she’d have a good alibi if she’d...well...

She wipes her hand off on the grass after flicking in another dumpling into her mouth.

//

Ah…

The Jade Forest.

Weishen takes a deep breath.

The perfect blend of mountain and forest air.

With the slight allure of food having been prepared.

Not enough to be smelled at the moment, but Weishen can see those familiar puffs of smoke emerging from the different monasteries visible from her altitude. She’ll stay clear of them since she’s had her fair share of inhaled smoke today to last her a couple of weeks.

Should Weishen perhaps visit the Temple of the Jade Serpent on her way over to Aresina? Get the Celestial’s blessing for the sparring? Or perhaps ask to stay the night after the two are done with their battle? Weishen’s got a story or two she could share since last time as payment, and the temple must’ve surely heard about the Battlelord’s endeavors too. It’ll do Aresina good to win back some confidence after Weishen humiliates her in private.

Should be fun to hear some boasting glory from her too. If a monk won’t pass up a chance to tell a good story, then a warrior certainly won’t. If a dropped needle can break a silence, then a thrown boulder can too.

Weishen would like to finish one or two stories she couldn’t really finish during her last visit as well. What with it being corrupted by the sha and all that, she couldn’t quite clear the third acts with her mind only set on reading. While she appreciates the idea of her story coming to life before her, it didn’t really do it in the way she expected, or wanted, it to be. Why the sha picked the part of her story where she was talking about Li Li she’ll never know. She has some ideas as to why, but the exact reason she’ll never know. 

Whether Weishen was doubting Li Li, or herself.

“You’ll aim for the title of Grandmaster, young Weishen?” the monotone reflection of Chen asked at the temple when Weishen first visited it a year or so into her official training. “With so few lessons behind you? You can’t even make a good brew with the time you’ve spent training.”

Those unofficial and official years were put on good display as Weishen sent the manifested doubt crashing into a pillar with a swift and powerful heel against its fat stomach that fled from so many restaurant bills full to the brim with hearty meals so thoughtfully prepared only to receive less than a thanks in return!

She didn’t have any previous mulling encounters to draw pleasure from finally having Chen paying back all those tips he was owing her by exploding into a ghastly growl and whirling exhaust of doubt when the features of a small cub emerged from the recuperating sha.

Weishen didn’t even have the opportunity to say to Chen what she’d prepared during so many baths and meditations spent imagining doing exactly what she did on that day at the temple. 

Maybe she can say it now?

Despite knowing fully that she’s completely alone on her misty mount, the monk still looks over both her shoulders to make sure the coast is clear.

“Appreciating the service now, Stormstout?”

…

Nope, didn’t do anything to her.

Damn it.

“What if I die?”

Weishen’s mouth twists to the side as she hums. Of course she’d be reminded of what came after her incredibly satisfying kick when thinking back on it.

“How long before your inexperienced teachings kills me?”

It was not until Li Li actually asked Weishen to be taught under her that the sha’s words caught up to her. The cub conjured from her doubt replaced Li Li’s eager smile stretching from black-spotted cheek to black-spotted cheek. The piercing green eyes begging against Weishen’s, but after a blink they turned into the same doubting and soulless holes the sha had worn in its deceit.

That doubt is what forced Weishen’s hand though. It was her chance to put her doubts of her worthiness behind her. Mentoring Li Li Stormstout would help Weishen prove that she took her what she’s been taught to heart. 

“Grandmaster Weishen?”

How many times did Weishen fruitlessly tell that cub that she could call Weishen anything she wanted? The same amount of times Li Li would dimiss that with a childish scoff.

“But I love the surprised faces when they hear me addressing you as Grandmaster, Grandmaster Weishen! It’s so fun! You handle your fame much better than what uncle Chen does. He’s always too busy heading off to another adventure that he can’t stay and be bashful over being recognized.”

“Why don’t you call me aunt Weishen instead?”

“Any specific reason for that?”

To Weishen’s incredible luck, an infernal meteor just barely grazed them by before Weishen had time to fail to answer. The first and only situation where she thanked the Burning Legion for anything.

Despite the invasion of their world by the might of the Burning Legion, Li Li still found so many new things to be excited about. 

For better, and worse.

“Isn’t it weird that the demons and guards around here only react to your illusion, and not me following you around? I don’t want to have an illusion myself, I’m not saying that. I don’t think I can stand being so...gaunt. Do they think I’m your pet or something? For being conquerors of entire worlds they’re not particularly bright. Besides the green flames, that is.”

Neither did Weishen for that matter with her illusion. The...gauntness. Good for hiding and not moving behind the width of banners, but not when trying to actually walk with balance upon smaller surface area than a gnome’s eyebrow. Some days she felt that she spent more of her day in disguise as that high-ranking Nightborne than as herself. To save the world, and all that. Luckily the Nightborne in Suramar looked constantly unamused so if anything she blended in among them in that regard. They had their reasons for their neutral frowns though, but those are bygone by now, luckily.

“And even weirder is that an occupied city that’s been isolated for thousands of years has the best ice cream.”

Weishen always wondered if Li Li was just following along just because she could easily convince the Grandmaster to buy her an ice cream. Suramar did look quite beautiful and serene from those lonely and purple towers Li Li suggested the two would eat their ice creams. Not even the most foul of forces in the Great Beyond could besmerch the ancient city and deprive it of its beauty. Weishen should return there with Li Li sooner rather than later.

Because she enjoyed the ice cream there just as much as the little cub.

Perhaps Li Li’s at the Temple of the Jade Serpent right now, even? Would be awfully nice to meet her again. She’d be ecstatic meeting Aresina, that’s for sure. Would probably pester the warrior until she relents and hands over her sword for Li Li to try out.

She was always disappointed when Sheilun didn’t reveal its powers to her, that runty student of Weishen, so maybe she’ll have better luck with Aresina’s weapon.

Come to think of it, there outta be some scrolls detailing more of the artifact she had to give up at Silithus lying somewhere in the temple. Maybe detailed enough for a blacksmith to try and replicate, perchance? Be blessed yet again by Yu’lon? Blessed even more?

If not, then perhaps Weishen can have a word with Yu’lon about some additional training regarding the artifact. Maybe there’s a way to receive her blessing in the field without it?

And then there’s also the physically small, but emotionally big reasons purring on her shoulder at the thought of its mother.

Yu’la lies like a collar around Weishen’s neck, sleeping peacefully, with puffs of mists rising from its cute muzzle. It’s been a couple of years since Weishen was entrusted the care of the green serpent’s broodling, and she’s unsure what to do with it by now, to be honest. It’s been a very comforting travel companion. Got along very well with Li Li, for instance. However, it’s grown almost too big for Weishen to carry on her shoulders, and what she’s to teach it next is a very gray cloud in her mind.

Also Weishen couldn’t smuggle out any high-ranking gi’s in time from the Wandering Isle, much to her surprise, and certainly to Aresina’s future dismay. It shouldn’t really have been a surprise with the fact that graduations are due next week. If she can get Yu’lon’s blessing for the sparring match it shouldn’t be a problem to also ask for two sets of gi’s for Aresina and her in addition to accommodations for the night. Might as well bite the entire arm instead of just the hand feeding you.

It’s almost dinner time so Yu’lon should be available once the bells start tolling. Weishen made sure to eat properly to help her potions get to work as she left the Wandering Isle, so she’s not in a hurry to eat now.

Doing that would risk cramping.

Yu’lon should also be kind enough to inform Weishen where Aresina is. The monk doesn’t really want to fly around aimlessly to find the warrior. Wouldn’t be difficult finding her red armor amid all this green, but it would be time consuming. A nail might be made out of metal, but it’s still an endeavor finding it in a stack of hay, after all. With Yu’lon’s breath permeating the region, even a pandaren as disconnected with the mists such as Aresina should be easy to find here.

A lot that Weishen’s about to ask of the celestial, isn’t it? She wouldn’t visit if she didn’t feel it was important though. She’s confident it won’t be any problem, but it’s the most she’s asked of one for quite a while now. Even during the Burning Legion’s invasion she didn’t come here for assistance. Granted, she had Sheilun at her side for that, but this will be different. It’ll be Weishen making a pilgrimage of sorts, and that’s for a pandaren she just met a couple of hours ago over drinks.

She sees pandarens every single day though, so why is Aresina different?

Could be the way she’s not very pandaren in her manners? More a warrior than a pandaren from the looks and hears of it. The notion seems strange to Weishen.

...So maybe Aresina was right about calling Weishen a stereotype?

There’s merit in the stereotype though. Weishen wouldn’t have become a Grandmaster if she didn’t have the merits for it. Aresina’s words ring true, but they do so for a damn good reason. Weishen had her one day where everything changed. Aresina will see it in practice in a bit, and perhaps then she’ll be able to let her hair grow out again.

Weishen will prove with her skills that one can leave the past behind. That a simple waiter can become a Grandmaster. That scars from battles past doesn’t have to hurt today. It can heal, and it can become stronger once healed than it was while hurt.

Weishen will not let her new friend’s mind be clouded with the past after the sun’s set today.

Hopefully she’s not thinking about those past days like Weishen is.

Shas always stain the mood.

//

It’s a good thing Weishen’s acrobatic as a monk otherwise she’d break her back falling from that high horse of hers.

Because come on!

She’s gonna judge Aresina’s armor while dressed in this thin a robe? Aresina’s afraid of tearing a hole in it just by breathing! It’s extremely soft and movable, yes, but she can even feel her fur through it as she rubs her fingers on each side for Chi’Ji’s sake!

It has to be the second layer for Weishen. It just has to! It’s like a ghost. Completely transparent, but unlike a ghost there’s not much left for the imagination to wonder if it was there or not. While Aresina understands that a monk of Weishen’s status is very inspirational, she’s now worried the inspiration comes not from her skills, but from her exposing her-

“You friend seeks you, warrior.”

Aresina snaps her head around while grabbing hold of the white robe’s folds in stunned terror. Did she get caught? A gentle breeze runs around her, dangerously close to lifting the robe over her head.

“May I guide her to you?”

That voice. It’s not Weishen’s. It comes from inside the wind.

“I sense your confusion, Battlelord,” the voice soothes with a washing calm. “It is I, Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent, that asks this of you. Your friend, Grandmaster Weishen, has come to my temple to ask for my blessing for your sparring, and for the two of you to stay the night afterwards.”

A celestial isn’t one to judge, right?

“What is it you wish to be judged on, child?”

...Nothing. Aresina slips the robe off as carefully as she can. And yes, great Jade Serpent, please guide Weishen here.

Aresina does her best to rearrange the armor back as carefully as possible onto the stone circle around the pond she used as a mirror. She really, really hopes it won’t be noticed that she tried it out.

Because really, how do you explain that away?

//

“Just follow the mists to your friend, Grandmaster,” Yu’lon instructs with a small bow to her large and shimmering emerald head. “You two have my blessing for your sparring, and you are welcome to stay at the temple for the night. I wish you both good luck in your battle.”

Weishen returns the bow respectfully. “You have my gratitude, Jade Serpent.”

“Liu Flameheart awaits at the temple’s entrance with the clothing you requested. It will help the two of you look past your differences.”

Weishen hangs her bow for a moment longer. What does Yu’lon mean by Aresina and hers differences? That they took different paths in life when it comes to their training? Different views in life? Or maybe…

Weishen’s entire body flinches as a terrifying thought runs up her spine. She gasps in fear, and throws herself up straight with her eyes widened and chest heaving rapidly. She snaps her head up to where Yu’lon’s glistening form was just a second ago, but the green dragon isn’t there any longer. Only some green, shimmering sparks that fall like rain from Yu’lon’s contours.

No, no doubt!

Weishen clears her throat of any and all doubt that tries to take root, and with determined steps she heads towards the large temple doors.

It can’t be what she thinks it is!

She’d notice!

Right?

//

“I got some tea and or coffee if you’re feeling sleepy.”

Aresina lifts her naked arm laid heavy over her eyes. She rolls her head over to see a green cloud dispersing to reveal Weishen putting down her rucksack from her back. She stretches her arms up behind her and tilts her neck from side to side to get some blood pumping.

“You’re stiffer than your armor,” comes a teasing chuckle from Weishen after a brief pause for her to take in the loud crackling noises coming from Aresina’s neck. “I’m surprised you can even move.”

“At least I was here in time,” Aresina counters after spitting out the long grass straw she plucked just before laying down for an after-dinner snooze. “Where did you...” Her words trail off as she halts herself from standing up. A strange uncertainty begins forming inside her, and she turns her head to where her mount landed hours before. 

On the opposite side of the mountain…

From the other compass point.

Aresina’s brow lowers into a worried expression as she slowly turns her head back to Weishen to observe the monk’s movements very carefully. The warrior’s hand moves over to her sword stuck in the ground behind her so that she could lean back on it while she slept. “I got us the gi’s,” the monk informs while reaching one over for Aresina to take. She does so reluctantly, letting loose of the hilt before Weishen can notice the flinch. There’s hesitation in her arms and hands, but she takes the clothing anyways.

Maybe there’s another explanation for this?

Weishen’s smile fades for a brief second, but she salvages it by shaking the frown away. “I also got us a place to stay for the night,” she begins explaining while untying the hemp knot around her own packaged gi. She fails twice due to her shaking hands, but eventually she manages to loosen it enough. “From the Temple of the Jade Serpent.”

The Temple of the Jade Serpent!?

Aresina catches her head in her palm as she heaves a rugged exhale. “Oh… Alright…” She feels dizzy from it, but the relief exploding inside of her quells it like a two-handed hammer onto a nail. Wow…

That was too close. 

For a second there Aresina thought Weishen was…

Nah, stop thinking about it.

//

W-why is Aresina so relieved when she heard that Weishen arrived from the temple?

She looks over to behind Aresina’s slumped over posture. There’s an ueven area of flattened grass inside a more even area of standing grass, like something large had been lying on it.

...No.

“What do you mean?” Weishen barks out of her as her fingers and claws clutch at her gi’s fabric. “Why are you so relieved?”

Please, please don’t be what Weishen thinks Aresina’s meaning.

“No, it’s...” The warrior’s words fail her as she chokes on her relief. She throws a thumb over her bare shoulder. “It’s just that it explains why you didn’t come from this way.”

No…

“Because,” Aresina continues, but with her relief being pushed aside by a creeping worry taking root in her voice again. Her eyes narrow hard on the monk. “Because I did.”

No.

“And you...”

NO!

“...Didn’t.”

Why did you point that way, warrior? Why? WHY!

A long and quiet moment pass by in tensed silence between the two pandaren, with nothing but the wind and the fearful gasp of the leafs from the nearby tree beginning to shake. It cowers from the realization that’s struck the two pandarens’ world like another hammer, shattering the peace that could’ve been.

All Aresina had to do was to point in the other direction.

//

Aresina’s finger curls back into a fist in tandem with her lips into the same frown that plagued her just a moment ago. A moment so blissful, yet now so distant. That moment has now slipped away. It’s been whisked away by the truth. The sliver of hope that believed that it was just a misunderstanding.

Why couldn’t it stay a lie?

She reaches over for her the hilt of her sword again, but this time willingly. This time she does it consciously. At the same time hears her...friend...doing it as well with her weapon. Aresina pushes herself upright with the help of her blade, and tugs it free from the ground, creating a wound that bleeds drops of soil that meld together with the illusionary drops of Armageddon.

Guess Aresina did use the right hearthstone after all.

Shame it took her this long to realize it.

//

Don’t.

Please don’t.

The warrior’s other hand reaches up to her collar, disappearing briefly within to bring out her two braids that she lets hang outside. At the end of them, holding together the weaved hair, are two blood-red insignia. “What’s yours?” she asks as her grip tightens around her sword. “I know what it is, but show me, monk!” A long second passes without Weishen moving a single muscle. How dare! “I’ve earned that honor from you, Alliance!” Give Aresina the respect!

Weishen’s is a single, proud, sea-blue, but it’s hidden behind her charcoal-black hair fastened in the rim of her ear. It’ll stay that way. It’ll stay hidden for as long as it has to.

“Where were you during the siege of Lordaeron!” Aresina shouts with eyes beginning to water. “Which side of the walls did you face that morning? Who did you heal? Who did you help get back up on their feet?” The handle of her sword is raised towards her enemy. “Look inside your paws, monk!” Ready to claim another notch. “Are they coated with the blood of my friends?”

Weishen swallows as she circles her left foot behind her. “I don’t want to answer that.” She locks her heel firmly into place, ready to rely on it with the slightest movement. The mists begin to envelope her, curling around her arms and legs like clinging vines, culminating around her flexed fingers, ready to listen to her summons. “I don’t have to answer that, warrior.”

Aresina’s grip hardens on the hilt of her sword in response. A single tear finds its way down her brown mask, carving a darkened stream as it flattens the strands of fur faintly dancing amid the passing breeze. “You don’t have to,” she whispers while catching the tear on a claw that she holds in front of her narrowed eyes. It eventually drops onto the ground, shattering and absorbing into the beige dirt as if it never existed. Wept for the loss of another friend, but with no one to see that it ever existed. Aresina grips the hilt with her second hand as well. “Because I already know the answer.”

“Please,” Weishen pleads while still ready to defend herself. It tugs at her heart, but she won’t die a martyr. She’ll live a teacher! She watches Aresina’s mask turn as dark and shadowy as it did when she told of her battle at Lordaeron. Black with dread, darker than Weishen’s mask. “We don’t have to.” She tries to force away the mists, to show that she won’t use them, but they still stay. They know that she’ll need them to protect herself. 

To fight against the enemy.

The warrior’s no longer a friend, but an enemy. Another one of Weishen’s failures. Another one she couldn’t save! Another one that’s proven the sha right!

Rage begins surging throughout the warrior. The almost lounging and clumsily dispersed weight shifts into a rigid position more honed than the finely sharpened edges of the cursed sword angled backwards by her determined grip. Her teeth flash more and more with each heavy breath dragging her tensed lips back, until she explodes into a deafening roar that has Weishen wincing from the pain triumphing inside of it. The roar quakes the mountain, splashing the waters inside the tranquil pond now made stressed.

She was so close… Weishen was so close to finally saving one that others thought she could never save, but again she couldn’t heal the scars she couldn’t see. 

And now she has to face her failure in combat.

Aresina leans herself forward, teeth grinding together as she stares down Weishen, who thrusts her staff forward to balance her stance out so that she can leverage it against the incoming charge. The air between the two is tense with what could have been. It’s thick with the knowledge that the other is the enemy. That the other is the one they were told weren’t their family any longer. The choice that they made hung from their ears, but also taken into heart.

Now they’re face to face.

Heart to heart.

Friend against friend.

Enemy against enemy.

They wait for the other to confirm it.

They wait for the other to take the first step from being a friend into being an enemy.

They wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wai-

“DAMMIT!”

The blossoming cherry tree behind the bell-shrine splits in twine as Aresina’s sword plunges through its large and ancient trunk, only stopping by the hilt, which digs in just enough for it to be a hassle getting out. The impact sends a rapid crack rushing up the wood, roaring in pain with each acute turn. Like confetti, the pink canape shatters into a snowfall of cherry flowers.

Weishen’s gasp barely has time to begin echoing before Aresina wheels around towards the stone wall circling the pond with her clenched fist. Her hand goes through, sending a head-sized stone out of the water with a mighty splash. Its escape from the water has it spinning uncontrollably, and it slams into the bell before falling off the cliff for what feels like a minute.

The warrior stands in the rushing water cascading between and around her legs with her bloodied fist trembling at her side. The fallen flowers collect briefly at her knees before getting dragged along with the rapids stretching towards the edges of the mountain. Each one of her rugged breath is slower and less angry than its predecessor, until finally she angles her head to the side to spit out what rage is left in her. It takes an audible toll on her throat, and she chokes from the dryness. With eyes almost closed in fatigue, she rolls her head onto her shoulder.

Weishen takes a timid step towards the warrior. “Aresina?” she asks carefully while putting aside her staff against the intact willow behind her. The mists does not yet leave her, because they now she’s in more need of it now. “Can we...”

Aresina presents her shaking hand, now opened into a welcoming palm, yet still dripping with blood and pain. She forces a pleading smile onto her softened lips. “Do you think you can heal a Horde?”

Weishen coughs away a pair of tears that rain down into the now placid stream trickling from the pond and down the tall mountain like the dark rivers carved into Aresina’s mask. “Do you think you can be healed by an Alliance?” she asks back while the mists begin to listen to her.

And Yu’lon blessing begins singing from the rung bell.

“So when you spoke of honor back in Dalaran,” Weishen begins carefully. Even with her caress being as gentle as she can with both her voice and healing, Aresina still flinches with each exploratory touch to asses the damage, closing her palm and dispersing the green mist into a fine fog. She opens it again, and Weishen ever so patiently begins her healing anew. “It wasn’t because of you being a warrior?”

Weishen finds it troublesome to take her eyes off the blood-red insignia visible on Aresina’s ear as she kneels down to help with Aresina’s hand. The warrior sits down on stone edge of the still draining pond while being careful as to not disturb Weishen too much. There’s no doubt that she broke her hand, so it’s gonna take some healing for it to be restored. 

//

“It was a part of it,” Aresina begins now that she’s sitting in such a way that she can’t see the lion-shaped insignia hanging from Weishen’s ear. She knows it’s still there, but she’s not being constantly aware of it now. “I...I was never pandaren growing up. I wasn’t like my parents. I wasn’t like Master Shang Xi, or anyone else of his students.” With her functional hand, Aresina reaches underneath her shirt. “I was always brash, angry, and full of rage. I couldn’t find balance because it was never at my center.”

“Here,” she offers as she takes out a coin that she hands to Weishen. “Flip it.”

Weishen holds it in her palm for a couple of seconds before deciding to flip it. Its clang is familiar to Aresina. She’s had it ever since she left the Wandering Isle. Given to her by her late master.

“Heads,” Weishen relays as the coin lands in her free palm. She gives it back to Aresina, who flips it as well.

“A coin is worthless without its other side. We pandaren have both heads and tails, just like the coin, but some favor heads while others favor tails,” Aresina tells as she flicks the coin in the air akin to how the bell behind her rung. “It’s what Master Shang Xi told me. He said that my rage is the side of the coin most would face down, but that my coin landed differently.” She catches it in her hand, and shows it to Weishen. “Balance is only in the middle if the support is in the middle. Giving in to your emotions makes them dangerous, but giving them out makes them inspiring. However, you have to understand them before others can. Control your feelings, my student, and where you pass, greatness will follow.”

The coin lands inside Aresina’s injured paw, and she bites down with a grunt. “Tails,” she relays to a wide-eyed Weishen. The warrior then nods as she puts the coin back inside her shirt. “I’ve yet to meet someone who’s also had it land tails, but one day, perhaps.”

“Sorry that I’m still a stereotype, then.”

The two pandaren join together in a chuckle, but only briefly.

Since Aresina’s hand is still broken.

“The Horde could help me with turning what others thought of as a curse into strength. They understood that it wasn’t a curse, and that it was something I should be proud of, and nurture with honor.” The warrior raises her healthy hand to halt Weishen before she can speak. “The worgen are different. They’ve turned their curse into their strength, but they still see it as a curse. I promised my master that I would come to understand myself and my emotions, and I would never have done that if I labeled them as a curse. He helped me find a purpose in life, and because of that I chose the Horde, because he’d wanted me to.”

Weishen nods. “I see.”

She doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t have to.

It’s what friends can accept from the other.

Even if it turns out they’re sworn to kill the other.

//

“I met a human a couple of years ago.”

The mists around Aresina’s hand flair in amusement.

“No, not like that,” Weishen says with a roll to her eyes. “A young soldier that stepped upon, to him, a distant shore shrouded in mists and intrigue. I had taken in at a tavern during a pilgrimage I went on to the temples of the August Celestials. I caught glimpse of that small figure eating with two pandarens. He looked inconspicuous, so it caught my attention.”

The amusement turns confused, and Aresina stifles a chuckle. “Didn’t you just say it wasn’t like that?” The comment earns her a claw against her broken wrist from Weishen. “Alright! Alright!” she apologizes while breathing in hard to weather the pain. “Sorry, continue.”

How nice of the warrior to allow Weishen to. She clears her throat before forming a massaging cloud around the wrist to get more blood to the area for it to swell up and hold a better grip around the broken bone. It also helps the mists to be absorbed and circulate, as well as acting like a brace so that the patient can’t hurt themselves more. Like for an example, teasing about a romance despite the healer already having dismissed it. 

“I was inconspicuous for the greater part of my life before becoming a monk. I was a traveler, I was a waitress, I was a janitor.” Weishen picks out a bamboo stick from the knot at the back of her hair. “I know normality like the back of my hand,” she explains with the stick horizontal across her mouth. She needs to figure out on which side of Aresina’s wrist the damage is worst so that the added support from the bamboo stick is the most effective. “And the human was trying a bit too hard to be normal. Especially for a human in low-ranking armor.”

“You seem to have known a lot about humans back then.”

Weishen’s eyes sink disappointingly, and she angles the bamboo stick to stab at the back of Aresina’s brown-spotted wrist instead of supporting it. “Do you warriors only learn from pain?”

“No! No! No!” the warrior expels in a panicked hurry with her bulging eyes at the threatening bamboo stick. Right now her wrist is swollen like a dumpling, but she has no desire of it being grabbed at by bamboo sticks like a real dumpling. “I mean, how did you know the humans didn’t act like that normally? The ones on the Wandering Isle certainly acted like a bunch of stuck-up, all important, vermin. They only compared me to the Worgen because of my fur.”

That’s not...wrong.

“I’d passed by a port a couple of days earlier. Had to eliminate some of the sha these strange people manifested with their wild emotions.” Weishen plucks the other bamboo stick from her hair too since it’s clear by now that both sides of Aresina’s wrist needs support for her to weave the mists into it with good effect. Her raven hair crashes at her back like a wave upon a beach. “Even with that small an exposure I could get the gist of the low-ranks’ manners, and those weren’t at all what that human in the tavern had. For starters, he had some.”

Aresina reaches for one of the bamboo sticks with her healthy hand, but Weishen smacks it away. “I see,” the warrior mutters like a cub. “And then?”

“I joined them as I overheard the human mention the celestials. He expressed great interest when I introduced myself and that I was heading to Chi’Ji’s temple to deliver some packages for my temple. I was already heading there for a pilgrimage, so why not take with me some packages that were meant for there? He asked if he could join me in my travels even before I’d finished explaining where exactly I was going. To pry a bit more from him I told him that the journey would be perilous, but he assured me that he could handle himself should the need arise. The fact that he didn’t make a motion towards his sword to emphasize when he said that had my suspicions growing.”

“So he was under disguise then,” Aresina says with a thoughtful nod. “And he didn’t mention anything about his squad or anything else?”

“Not a single word about that. What seemed to flow out of him constantly was the gratitude he showered onto the two pandarens he’d eaten with. Very different from a footman’s vocabulary. His voice too outranked the lack of stripes on his armor. There wasn’t any roughness to it. No strain on it from previous battles.”

“So a priest of sorts?”

Weishen moves her head side to side, parting the strands of her flowing hair like a broom’s bristles when sweeping. “More or less. His proficiency with the Light was very interesting. Beyond what a priest praying for the Light would allow. He was destined of sorts, but I didn’t pry further during our travels. I enjoyed his company quite a lot.”

Weishen pauses to look at Aresina for any sign of a snicker or worse.

Worse for her, that is. 

But there is none.

Good.

“He eagerly listened to my stories, but seldom told one himself. It didn’t feel right to him to withhold as much as he did, but he begged for my understanding that it was for my own good, at least for the time being. He’d return my favor with interest though, that he swore.”

“How far did his disguise go?” Aresina asks curiously. “Was he even a human? Or did his disguise reach even further than that?”

“No, he was human,” Weishen answers before beginning work on the awkwardly bent fingers. “You got something to bite down on?”

Aresina rolls back her tongue. “Ij’m jused to dhich,” she...says...with her tongue out of the way of her teeth. “Sgho acghead.” She then bites down.

Each finger, a thick branch cracked over a knee. Each pull to straighten the awkward bend of the fingers tensing Aresina’s arm as the bones pop, forcing the contours of her biceps and shoulder out of her thick fur. Veins expanding as they’re stuffed with the pain and blood hurrying to help.

Weishen slowly caresses the brown-red fingers with her black ones, transferring the mists over. It should begin healing swiftly with Aresina being a pandaren. Weishen can just transfer over the feeling of her own healthy bone structure through her weaving along with the soothing feeling to replace Aresina’s gritting hurt. The warrior breathes out the last of the pain as the mists begin grazing her fingertips, moving to envelop her entire hand in a gentle and soothing breeze. With a calmed inhale she brushes away her braided locks away from her cheeks and behind her ears.

“What did the Red Crane say about this human?” the warrior’s choking voice wonders. “Help me get my mind off the hurt, if you could.”

Of course.

“Chi’Ji welcomed us both, and did so with open wings. He’d followed the two of us and our travel to his temple for some time, and he was honored to welcome our pilgrimage. A human had never visited his temple before, and he was intrigued by the fact that the first one was none other than the prince himself.”

Aresina’s eyes are thrown open. “Anduin Wrynn?”

Got her mind off the hurt, like promised.

“’Tis the name what the Red Crane greeted him with. He could not offer any regal accommodations, but that wasn’t what Anduin was seeking,” Weishen continues with a nostalgic tone to her voice, radiant and warm like Chi’Ji’s hopeful song. “The Red Crane fluttered his wings in intrigue, and two feathers fell from his plumage. Anduin picked them up after being granted permission from their previous owner, and handed me one.”

//

Aresina has to. She just has to. Her healthy hand is on her mouth to try and hold it in, but it just…

It won’t. It can’t be held in. Not with what Weishen just said.

“Are. You. Sure?” Aresina asks very, very carefully. “Are. You. Sure. About?” she tries again after Weishen’s head flops down with an exaggerated sigh. 

But not even trying to coax with some motions of her hand will be enough. Weishen lifts her head again, sporting the same unamused smile and narrowed eyes, albeit now with an accompanying pair of folded ears. “I. Am. Sure,” she answers while waving threateningly with the second bamboo stick. “He gave it to me as thanks for my escort.”

Aresina breathes in through her clenched teeth.

“Not! That! Kind! Warrior!”

And breathes out while biting her lips not to say anything further.

“And with those tucked inside our clothing, Chi’Ji took us under his wings as his disciples. He also very much enjoyed the moon cake I was tasked with bringing along as tribute, if you were wondering, and asked me to carry his thanks back to my master once I returned there.”

“Oh...” jumps out of Aresina’s surprised mouth. She wasn’t completely ready for that sudden left turn. “Fair enough, I guess.”

Her surprise gives Weishen an opportunity to give the hurt wrist a twist to see how the healing is progressing. The fact that Aresina isn’t jerked out of her distant gaze is a good sign.

The two might still be able to spar. Aresina’s body must be accustomed to being healed since it’s not resisting the change. For all the good that healing does, it’s still intrusive to the patient’s body. Trauma and shock is a great factor in field healing, and if the body isn’t used both physically and mentally more strain has to be put on the healer to compensate for that.

A soothed patient is healed more than a shocked one.

But perhaps Aresina is a bit too soothed at the moment. While her not flinching and screaming in agony is good and all, Weishen still needs to know how much it’s hurting, even if it’s not a lot. She snaps her fingers in front of the unfocused, auburn eyes, which contract and regain their focus. “Still with me?”

//

Don’t say anything about celestial bird seed.

Don’t say anything about celestial bird seed.

Don’t say anything about celestial bird seed.

“Yeah.”

Good job.

Very close though.

Keep quiet for now lest you risk blurting it out again.

//

Good.

“How much does this hurt?” Weishen inquires patiently while tugging Aresina’s wrist slightly to the side. “One to ten?”

“Four.”

“How much did it hurt when you punched the wall?”

“Six.”

Yeah, sure. Weishen’s gonna add two or three to both of those low and boasting numbers and continue from there.

And speaking of continuing.

“I didn’t stay long since I was only there for the delivery, and Anduin didn’t stay for much longer since the temple was attacked by the Sha Of Despair.”

“I heard about that.”

“Met him later at the Temple of the White Tiger.”

“Another delivery?” hazards Aresina with a knowing nod.

Which Weishen returns. “Yes, actually.” She taps at Aresina’s injury with her thumb so assess. Seems to be healing up nicely now. Shouldn’t be long. “Me.”

“To train, I assume.”

Without any more hints to romance. The warrior’s learning, again. Hopefully it sticks this time.

“To train under the tutelage of Xuen, yes. Anduin had arrived there earlier than I, and he expressed his happiness over seeing me again, and told me of his purpose there as well.”

“Opening up the Vale.”

“It’s strange hearing you say it with such informality,” Weishen feels she has to say, because it really does. Her brow furrows as she reflects on the feeling, making doubly sure it doesn’t spread to her healing mists. Won’t do good with conflicting feelings when she’s trying to heal. “Back before it was opened it was only whispered about. The Vale Of Eternal Blossoms, locked in time as a final sacrifice by the last pandaren emperor.” She scoffs a chuckle. “Guess it took another of regal status to open it. I remember seeing that Tauren paladin looming over the prince like a shadow, to the displeasure of everyone around Anduin, except himself, apparently.”

“So with him you didn’t-”

Oh for crying out loud!

“How. Many. Times. With. This. Warrior?”

“No!” Aresina defends while waving her hands. Both of them. Nice. Must be healing very well then. Almost makes up for Weishen being fooled by Aresina pretending to have learned her lesson. The warrior doesn’t even notice that she’s doing it, but places her wrist back into Weishen care afterwards as the monk’s features soften. “I meant, you made it sound like you helped him convince the celestial, that’s all.”

...Alright, guess that excuse is good enough. “I did it to open the Vale, and for no other reason. Opening it was big enough that I didn’t feel that I needed a secondary one.”

“Yes, yes,” Aresina waves off. It sounds like she’s finally getting the point now for a third time. A lie, most likely, but one can always hope. 

Weishen removes the bamboo braces from the now healed wrist. “And opened it did.” She fastens the sticks back in her reformed hair as Aresina rolls her wrist carefully. “The mists still have some work left to do, so be careful with moving your injury around, please.”

“Ah,” Aresina releases her wrist with one last careful shake, “right.”

“I want a good spar, after all,” the monk teases while struggling to insert the second stick. “Could you?” she asks while turning her back. “Just push up my pony-tail a bit, please.”

//

… 

It’s been a while since Aresina held hair this long.

…

It’s soft at its end.

… 

Maybe she should try the potion after the sparring match.

… 

Maybe.

//

Weishen drags a warm smile as thanks for Aresina’s assistance, and she gets a warm one back.

“Anduin then formally asked me to join the Alliance. I’d more than proved my worth, that he could vow for me personally. It was an honor at the time. He was filled with such pride and hope for having the possibility to extend that invitation to me.” Weishen runs her insignia between her fingers. “It was I that was in admiration though. Towards his actions.” Weishen makes sure to put emphasis on the last word so that it can’t be heard wrongly.

Although maybe she shouldn’t have said ‘admiration’.

“He was a prince from a different land, and he chose to undergo these trials for a people he’d not known of earlier. He was hunted, captured, escaped, and hunted again, yet he still pushed on to open up the Vale for us. The gates and walls I’d spent my entire life glancing upon and thinking that one day, they would be opened. Never did I think it would be in my own lifespan though. Never did I think I’d witness it, and never did I think I’d be thanked for it. Anduin helped me and my people get our home back, and for that I owe him. For that I want to protect his country as he did mine. Not as a favor, but as a promise. A dedication that might one day mirror what he did to us. He is my King now, because that’s what I saw of him during our travels and training.” Weishen glances behind her to Aresina, lowering her head as the two meet eyes. “And that’s how I joined the Alliance. For a duty, and to pay back with interest, like Anduin did.”

//

“How much an interest have you paid, monk?”

That’s really the question of the hour now, isn’t it?

“And how much do you understand yourself now, warrior?”

The two pandarens nod in unison. The less the said about this the better, that the two have realized by now. They don’t need to know how many lives of the other faction they’ve helped take, or taken themselves.

There’s something between them though. Something in the mists. Stirring, just a little bit. Barely enough to tug at their respective insignia. Almost as if it is the only thing keeping them apart, really. They didn’t notice themselves, only when they saw the other’s chosen symbol. 

“You think if we switched earrings our factions wouldn’t notice we were actually the other one?” Aresina scoffs. “I understand why you chose the Alliance though. The Horde’s leadership was a bit...fractured back then, to say the least.” She drags a deep sigh while bending her arm and wrist in different ways to see where it still hurts. “Still is, in a way.” It doesn’t hurt anywhere out of the ordinary, actually.

“The Alliance isn’t all sunshine and roses either,” Weishen adds while beckoning for Aresina’s wrist again. Just for a final check on the fingers and bones. “The Humans look down their noses at the other races. Not Anduin, of course, but there’s always this air of reservation from the rest. Anduin is more the exception rather than the rule. He is however surrounded only by Royal Guards which are strictly humans. Some days it’s almost like I’m more an ally to the humans rather than a member of the Alliance.”

“Bit of a shame.”

“The Horde was built on more of a necessity of cooperation in a way that wasn’t just to be a temporary solution. Cooperation because they saw that they could be better as a sum of their parts rather than a flimsy consolidation of human kingdoms that really didn’t want anything to do with each other. Then, almost reluctantly, other races were invited in to join, which still left this human spirit of self-importance lingering like the smell of a badly brewed batch of beer.”

Weishen seems reluctant to give Aresina her hand back. 

“It’s only temporary if it doesn’t work, and the Alliance has held itself together far better than the Horde has these last couple of years,” Aresina...retorts? 

Huh, guess she did. Strange.

Although, she’s not speaking to a fellow Horde now, is she? She’s speaking to an Alliance, an enemy. Does it really matter if an enemy is gossiped to about how the Horde isn’t perfect? It’s not like Weishen thought it was perfect to begin with. What’s the worse that can happen? That she doesn’t choose the Horde?

That ship’s sailed beyond the furthest horizon already.

Aresina licks her lips before inhaling through her nose. “Our Warchief is set more set on war than peace, but I guess her title made it inevitable. And with Saurfang...” 

Weishen angles her head up while continuing to massage the warrior’s auburn-furred wrist with eyes widened and ears piqued. Aresina’s eyes are again drawn to the yellow lion on her healer’s ear. “I chose the Horde because I wanted to understand myself, but there’s always been a nibbling thought in the back of my head that the Horde doesn’t even understand itself nowadays.”

She taps at her own red insignia with a claw. “It...it’s confused. The Horde is confused about itself, and I fear for it, for it is my family. I’m still loyal to Sylvanas, current conversation not considered, and she’s been with the Horde for too long to just throw it aside. She’s for the Horde, and so am I, but...”

//

The wrists feels as if it’s healed enough, but Weishen’s doesn’t want to inform Aresina of that. It’s very odd hearing a Horde talk like this, and of her own faction. Weishen’s never been able to open up to an Alliance about her thoughts on her own faction.

But to a Horde?

Her head turns to the training gi hastily thrown aside as she reached for her weapon.

Perhaps this is what Yu’lon meant?

//

“Maybe I could understand myself better if I’d chosen Alliance. Perhaps I was wrong about dismissing the Worgen and their curse.” Aresina tugs at her ear where her red insignia hung proudly just a couple of hours ago, but now it’s dangling with doubt. It’s itching, almost. “If the purpose of the Horde changes with each year, then how am I to find my own? Just as soon as it trickles down to me it’s set to change with a new Warchief. The Alliance may be a loose coalition held together more by the thought that they aren’t the Horde, but that at least is consistent enough that it won’t buckle an inch.” She looks over to her red armor lying in its pieces. “Sturdy enough that I can worry about myself rather than who I am following. A solid core that I can draw myself from.”

“I see.” Aresina feels Weishen’s hand harden for just a moment around her wrist. “It’s hard to find kinship within the Alliance though. It’s as if...” Another squeeze happens as Weishen tries to find the right words in her mind to say. “It is as if all the different races are pillars to hold up a roof, but each one stands on their own. They keep to themselves, both their customs and grudges. If you’re not one of them, then you’re not one of them, and will never be. There’s nothing...spiritual. On paper instead of in their hearts. Each one of the pillars are in parallel, but they’re only together because of politics rather than family or a sense of kinship. They’re too similar that instead of focusing what makes them similar, they focus on what makes them different.”

“Only on paper instead of in heart sounds like an...Alliance?” Aresina says hesitantly. It’s...true, but is it the right thing to say? Judging by Weishen’s clamped silence and curled back lips, perhaps it wasn’t. Dammit, Aresina doesn’t know how to speak about this! 

Weishen sighs while massaging her forehead with her hand. “Yes...you’re right.”

Or does she?

The monk looks over to the side through the leafy and stony canopies of the Jade Forest towards the Vale Of Eternal Blossoms. “I guess I did get a bit too close to Anduin then.” She then shakes her head as she returns her focus to Aresina’s arm. “Gave me a wrong idea of what the Alliance was. Through Anduin I saw that it was more family rather than politics, but I guess those were just royal-tinted glasses. Wrong assumption on my part, and that’s my fault, not the Alliance’s. I don’t regret my choice,” she says sternly while looking hard into Aresina’s eyes for a second before softening and again returning to the almost healed wrist, “but I do wonder sometimes, like you do.”

“Guess we both made the same choice despite it being different,” Aresina offers. “Because we didn’t really make a choice. We couldn’t consider the other one as a valid one, so how was it really a choice then?”

Weishen nods along with her eyes still across the horizon towards the Vale. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Aresina joins in with her own eyes. “I still value the Horde for what I want it to be, and for what I need it to be. I need direction, and I pray I haven’t been led the wrong way.”

A relaxed chuckle escapes Weishen. “With the tauren on your side, then how can you?”

That’s a bit too...true. Way too true! Weishen can probably feel Aresina’s heartbeat fluttering like a butterfly through her wrist.

//

Weishen’s chuckle turns surprised.

Well, well, well. Looks like someone was projecting a bit when teasing about interracial relationship. Weishen’s gonna be the bigger pandaren though.

“Is it a Tauren in your platoon?”

But only the tiniest bit bigger.

“It’s...”

Oh that is just precious! Aresina’s turning redder than her armor! A warrior reddened in bashfulness rather than rage. Good for her for finding love. Weishen can’t help but to giggle with Aresina. Hopefully she won’t take it as a giggle towards her.

//

Oh no!

This is so embarrassing!

“...Baine Bloodhoof...”

//

That’s not something to be embarrassed of. Baine’s a very calm and capable Tauren. Even as an Alliance, Weishen has great respect for him. If he becomes the next Warchief, perhaps this war can be averted.

Oh. By. Chi’Ji’s. Wings. Though. Is Aresina adorable squirming like she does. None of her weathered appearance is on display now, and Weishen’s wrung the most stubborn of water out of old rags with less force than how Aresina’s treating her braids. No way in hell could anyone look at her right now and guess that she’s a warrior. That she’s a Battlelord, even? Not with her finger so caught up in being wrapped up inside her braids rather than around the hilt of her sword.

This is just fantastic!

Oh…

Weishen falls back onto her arms with her head bent up high. This is exactly what she needed. It’s also probably exactly what Aresina needed too. Weishen can’t remember the last time her shoulders felt so light. Felt so loose and relaxed. She rolls her neck over to Aresina.

Perhaps she should help her friend feel just as loose and relaxed. Her wrist’s healed up now, and it’s just about to traverse into sunset now. It’ll be such a beautiful spectacle. Something to remember for an entire life, even across faction lines.

Weishen breathes the passing breeze in deep.

And exhales it just as carefree as how she inhaled it.

“Get your gi on, Aresina,” she says with a smile and laughter that has her almost crying. “We should stretch before beginning our match.”

//

Just like...right now? In front of each other? Because Aresina’s fine if Weishen’s…

Naked.

Weishen’s naked.

Eyes, move away.

Eyes.

Please listen.

Eyes!

Finally...

Aresina’s thankful her cheeks were already blushing before, otherwise things might’ve become awkward.

With a bit of weight on her wrist to test how it feels, she stands up while turning her back against Weishen out of respect, whatever sliver of it left she can salvage. With a swift motion of a claw, she undoes the knot around her packaged gi by cutting the ribbon off. 

She whips the content out to assess what she’s been given. Shirt and trousers, that’s it. No change of underwear, but the temple must have some sort of bathing facility, so that shouldn’t be a problem later.

Aresina unfolds her given shirt out to its full size, and turns it around to inspect the quality. The fabric feels like a cloud, it’s incredibly soft. Yu’lon must’ve made it by mists, there’s no other explanation. It’s black like the other gi’s Aresina’s worn, but along the right arm and shoulder there’s an embroidered image of Yu’lon reaching across and coiling her tail around the back. Most likely on a point where monks draw their chi from.

While it might not serve Aresina any good, it still feels extremely comfortable on her fur. It’s almost floating, like morning fog above fresh morning glory dew.

Not the drink, but actual morning dew.

Could’ve done with a size bigger, to be perfectly honest. This rather...taut...fit isn’t sitting well with the fabric’s cloudy touch. Sitting well around Aresina’s chest, yes, perhaps a bit too well. It’s not constricting her arms or shoulders though, so her movement wont be hindered, but Aresina’s gotta be careful taking heavy breaths lest she risks blinding Weishen with an exploding button. Fighting dirty is for rogues, not for warriors. The pants feel the right size though, which has Aresina wondering. Did Weishen specify the sizes to Yu’lon? 

And how does Aresina feel about that?

Incredibly light and soft from the fabric. With the full set she really feels like she’s walking through clouds. Fluffy clouds, not rain-clouds. Should become heavy with sweat though once the two get going with the sparring match.

Aresina’s eyes are thrown open as a thought strikes her like thunder.

If there was no change of underwear, then why was Weishen-

“Let’s begin with the bigger muscles,” the monk eagerly suggest while stealing Aresina’s arms by hooking her own into them. The warrior’s dragged back-to-back with Weishen, and she carefully lowers herself down so that the two stand on knees in right angle. “Again, you’re stiffer than your armor,” Weishen teases with another giggle.

This again? Aresina angles her head around to look over her shoulder. “At least I-”

  


//

Oh!

Oh…

Oh boy.

That ain’t good.

Weishen slides her arms out of Aresina’s, and the warrior falls over stiff as a branch. Aptly so since her back just cracked like one. A thick one, almost a trunk, even. Her body slams into the ground with an echoing bounce that throws up a thin cloud of dust.

“……..”

“Does it hurt?” Weishen asks while pushing an unruly piece of hair out of her face as she bends down.

“…….”

She must’ve known the exercise though! Back-to-back, knees bent, then one pushes their back while the other bends forward. It’s the first thing taught at the monasteries!

“…..Ow.”

Oh, so she’s conscious. Good.

“I think my soul is gone,” Aresina says with a ghastly moan. “Catch it before it’s blown away!”

Wow, and here Weishen was only kidding when she said Aresina was as stiff as her plate armor. Weishen knows how to fix this though, and she reaches over to her rucksack to fetch some of her needles and some unction.

“I’m gonna provoke some of your muscles and apply some heat salve in the meanwhile,” she explains carefully as Aresina’s pupils shrink seeing the size of the needles in Weishen’s hand. “Should loosen your back up.”

As if scraping a pestle inside a mortar, Aresina turns her head so that her cheek’s resting on the hard ground instead of her bleeding nose. “How do you mean ‘provoke’?” she asks with mortified agency. “And how much?”

But it’s too late.

Weishen’s already begun provoking with her needles.

It’s like poking into solid rock though. Almost to the point where Weishen needs a hammer. She shouldn’t resort to it firstly though. “Could you relax a bit for me?”

//

What.

The.

Hell.

Is.

That.

Question?

//

The vacant stare shot back at Weishen from Aresina is quite convincing in its absent, and she instead begins applying the unction to begin with. Just a little bit though, barely a paper thick layer. Weishen made the mistake of smearing it on like butter on bread on patient when she was early in her career. Luckily there was a nearby frost mage to help cool the patient off.

She’s learned from then though, and only now applies just enough for it to sink into the topmost layer of Aresina’s back muscles. After a silent minute for Aresina’s back to tender itself from the unction the needle now goes through a bit easier. Aresina flinches again with a guttural choke as it pierces through her skin and deep into her rigid flesh, but collapses with a pleased hum immediately after. “Better?” Weishen wonders with a blooming smile.

“...Hm?”

Good enough.

“You mind if I get to work on your limbs?”

“How do you mean?”

It’s better if Weishen shows instead of telling if Aresina’s gonna ask the same question over and over again. She’ll be rudely interrupted by the joints cracking like thunder again should she try to explain while doing it. 

Now that the back’s at least warmed up enough to not be as stiff as plate armor, perhaps the shoulders should be the next stop. Weishen shoves her knee underneath the limp limb.

//

“What are you doing?” Aresina’s head asks worryingly while tilted the other way. She’d want nothing less in the world than to turn around the other way, but alas her commands to the rest of her body fizzle away at her jaw.

She’s at Weishen’s mercy now.

And it’s an awful time for Aresina to be reminded that Weishen’s an Alliance at this moment.

And that she herself is Horde.

A helpless Horde, paralyzed by an Alliance acupuncturist.

“Um, Wei?” 

Weishen lifts up Aresina’s arm slowly. “Yes, warrior?”

“We concluded that we were friends, right?”

“I think so,” the monk answers while stretching the arm out until it begins tugging underneath Aresina’s scapula. “Why do you wonder?”

“N-no reason.” Aresina closes her eyes hard as she feels the knots in her shoulder’s muscle begin to untie themselves.

“I don’t know what’s more braided,” the monk says through a surprised sigh. “Your hair or your muscle fibers.” She angles the arm for the final stretch of the...stretch, and leans over Aresina’s turned head. “You ready?”

No.

“Just be careful.”

With a shove not unlike what a farmer would do his spade into some dried and difficult soil, Weishen pushes the warrior’s arm into its socket. The sound is like two rocks slamming into each other, and it has Weishen wincing a bit from how loud it is. She then bends the arm over the deadened back, popping and cracking the joints with each careful push.

“By Odin...” trickles out of Aresina like the last leaf off a tree in early winter.

“Feels good?”

“I don’t know yet.”

//

As long as it’s not hurting.

The other shoulder sings its percussion just as loudly as the first one, and again a sound between a pleasant moan and a thoughtful groan escapes from Aresina’s lips. It’s not hurting her though, otherwise she’d been swatting away her red-brown braid that’s flopped over her half-closed eyes. She wouldn’t be grinning tiredly as well.

Neck next.

With the bottom of her palm pressed firmly against the most tucked-out vertebrae, Weishen pushes down with her own weight to force it back into place. Aresina’s eyes explode open for a second before returning to their half-closed state again. “I knew you were trying to kill me,” she says in a satisfied sigh as she begins drifting off. “You Alliance scum.”

“Then you’d already been dead, Horde brute.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

The legs Aresina will have to do herself. Can’t really do much while she’s flat...round...on her stomach like this. “I’m gonna pull out the needles now,” Weishen warns. “Get ready for your back to realize that’s its nerves have been silenced for a while. It’s gonna feel like your entire back has been sleeping, so be ready.”

“I’ve had arrows in me, so I know the feeling,” Aresina informs with a bit of a snark to her drifting voice.

“Wouldn’t be familiar if you’d worn proper armor,” Weishen counters underneath her breath.

“What was-”

And out the needles go! Like plucking Peacebloom on a nice spring meadow.

“Oooooohhhh,” Aresina expels through gritted teeth as she crashes down back to reality. “That’s not at all the same!”

Weishen dries off the few drops of blood that followed along on the grass. “Should wear off in a bit.”

“Should?”

Weishen’s not gonna answer that. She is gonna put her paw on Aresina for a moment to seal up the small pricks from the needles though.

Good as new.

//

As if for the first time in her life, Aresina pushes herself up on her knees. She rolls her shoulders, her eyes lowering in thought as she does. She angles her neck from side to side, tugging her newly freshened muscle while pushing out her lower jaw. Lastly, she pushes her elbows out and slowly behind her as she breathes in, and with a powerful shove she forces them forward as if hungrily hugging the air in front of her while exhaling all the way from her toes.

A torch bug is caught in the turbulence and is tossed over the side of the mountain like luminescent spit.

“Wow!” Aresina coughs out while waiting for the blood to return to her head so that her vision isn’t completely black. “I don’t think I can remember the last time I did that without it feeling like I’m dragging my arms through Silithus.”

“Glad I could help,” Weishen replies while pushing her chest out with both her arms locked by her fingers behind her. She inhales quickly for a few breaths before pivoting up her arms to move the leverage to her shoulders. “Feeling better?” she asks as she shakes her arms loose. With a quick motion she gestures for Aresina to lean to the side on her leg while she does it herself.

“Yes, but it feels a bit strange,” answers Aresina while rocking on her bent leg to stretch the front of her other extended leg. “Usually I get the adrenaline to loosen me up a minute or so into the battle.”

Weishen moves over to stretch her other leg, and Aresina follows. “That just creates more work for your healers if you don’t take care of yourself for a bit in between battles.”

Aresina’s head dangles from side to side in a fair bit of shame. “I guess...”

Although she has her reasons not to have stretched for a while. The war’s been rather constant, and sleeping and eating takes priority, as well as currying favors from Odin. Bwonsamdi never said what types of soul he wanted in return, and Hel has plenty. Now that Odin can poke around down there again it should be enough for Aresina to pay off that debt she took on.

For reasons that have become less and less justifiable with each passing day.

Even if Aresina had her ponytail as a reason to be alone, it would’ve taken up the time she’d been granted by it, so still not a net positive on that. Not really a lot of healers that can spare their knowledge of acupuncture so that Aresina can feel a bit better either. Not when it’s more useful making sure that an actually injured soldier isn’t going into shock.

No.

Stop.

Forget the war for now.

Do it as a favor to your new friend readying herself for the sparring match you promised her.

Weishen bounces up from her stretch, letting her leg flow upwards before angling it across the width of her stomach. She pushes her leg down into the ground behind her, planting it sturdier than the thick roots of the old willow tree casting its dancing shadows over her. The impact rushes through her form like a wave, and her arms extend up in the air to dispel it. Before they can begin falling she catches them by tensing herself. One arm pushed forward with her pinky finger lowered, and her other hovering half-bent at her side. She throws her eyes open, and they turn a glistening green for a second before she exhales sternly.

“You first, warrior.”

Aresina tugs a devious smile. “Gladly.” She drags the pad of her foot behind her as well as she bends forward with arms readied at her sides. With a determined push off the ground, she begins her charge, swinging her arms in rhythm with her long steps that rumbles the mountain underneath her.

//

...Why did Weishen expect anything different from a warrior other than a straight forward charge? It looks focused and fast enough for Weishen to not be able block or absorb the momentum Aresina is building up should she come close enough.

Oh well, it should be easily avoided. Aresina needs to get into grapple distance for her to actually begin her attack, so Weishen just has to step aside when it’s too late for the warrior’s to commit to something else. If she manages to adjust her trajectory, Weishen can utilize that Aresina won’t have good balance, and just lean into the turn further than what Aresina can physically do.

Hopefully she won’t trip over the mountain’s edge afterwards.

Weishen angles her weight away from the incoming warrior, lifting it away from her back foot so that she can lean away from the charge and-

//

“Cocky, ain’t ya?”

//

What?

//

With one arm around Weishen’s neck, and the other on the her furthest shoulder angled away, Aresina follows through with her lunged tackle to force Weishen down on the ground. There’s grass between the claws on her toes from where she pounced towards the surprised monk, but as she tucks her knee away from Weishen’s waist to not injure the green strands fall off like confetti. As the ground closes in, Aresina makes sure that her forearm is behind Weishen’s head to further soften the impact.

She gonna ruin the monk’s hair, but at least she’ll save what’s underneath it from getting ruined by the patch of dirt the two will crash onto.

Just a sparring match between friends, after all.

Once Weishen hits the ground, Aresina lets go of her grip, and rolls into her landing. It’s quite an awkward roll she does, more as a barrel rather than a ball. She’s not used to letting go after her tackle, and with the shift in balance from moving her knee away to not injure her sparring partner, Aresina collides awkwardly with the base of the willow standing a bit too close to the mountain’s edge for comfort.

A catkin is shook loose from the collision, falling into Aresina’s dazed ear as if destined to. With a panicked yelp she throws it away as if it was a leech about to burrow into her skull as she flies up on her feet again. She shudders like the willow while rummaging inside her ear for any wayward fluff that might be left.

Pain she can stand, and stand tall to boot, but itching is too much for the seasoned Battlelord.

//

A cloud passes by the brightly orange sky that’s otherwise clear of anything else besides the mellow gradient from blue to yellow to red to pink. Weishen nods to herself as she’s flat on her back staring up into the sky with her air...somewhere, but not in her lungs.

She coughs.

Alright.

Seems like Weishen underestimated Aresina a bit.

The Grandmaster smacks her lips after reconstituting them with a thoughtful lick to spit away some specks of dust from the cloud her landing flung up over her. Not as big as the one in the sky, but big enough to be annoying.

Oh well, the Battlelord can have that round.

Because now Weishen knows exactly how much Aresina knows about martial arts. Well, not exactly, but she knows the lowest level she should assume. It takes more than a rookie to plan ahead for what your adversary will do, and to think even further ahead to consider what your opponent thinks of you.

Aresina knows more than she lets be shown which is a viable strategy. That’s not only information that Weishen can utilize to make sure that it will be the only time Aresina will be able to lay a hand on her.

“Takes a lot of martial arts training to perfect that move, warrior.”

But Weishen can also tease Aresina about it too!

//

Oh for…

Dammit!

“Or maybe,” Aresina begins to retort with her tone forced to sound aggravated. As she stands up straight and intimidating though she finds herself with more leafy dreads than hairy ones in her face. She swats away while blowing through her lips, which kinda fizzles out the intimidation like a warlock slurring his or her demonic incantation and summons one of those imps that can’t do more than just nibble at your toe.

Just sad, really.

“Or maybe Odin finds it more glorious if I prove my worth without a weapon,” Aresina tries again after puffing up her chest to give her voice a bit more bass to it. “Unless he says that it’s more worth with a weapon. It’s a guess what he considers more glorious on each day.”

Weishen motions for the last willow leaf stuck in Aresina’s hair. “How many times have you done that?” It looks quite good, actually, a bit of bright green to compliment the red-brown, but it’ll fall into Aresina’s face as soon as the two begin with the next round.

“Proven my worth?” Aresina spins the leaf by its stem between her fingers as she thinks. “This week?”

“This...week?” Weishen blinks. “This week?” she asks again with her neck craned forward in bafflement. She leans one ear closer in hope that it’ll help her hear better.

“Six or seven times.” Somewhere around there. “That was only counting with yesterday though and not today. I haven’t done any today due to...well, I’m sure you’re aware.”

“But...” Weishen shakes her disbelieving head. “This week started the day before yesterday!”

“Slow week then.” Aresina flicks away the leaf. “Usually I’m double digits by now. It’s good training, so I’m not complaining,” she adds with a shrug. “And I usually get Helgar to sharpen my blade while I’m at it. Unless I need to use it, that is. Then I have him sharpen it afterwards, obviously.”

Doesn’t seem that obvious to Weishen as she needs a few seconds for it to sink in. In the meantime Aresina takes the opportunity to brush the dust off the face of Yu’lon on her gi. She thinks herself feel a subtle gust thanking her for it. “I...” spills out of the monk’s stunned mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to that, actually.”

“Then should we get back to it?” Aresina offers. She extends a proud finger, “First point to me, right?” before curling it back into her clenched fist. Her foot runs the width of a dramatic half-circle as she creates a mist of dust around her. One fist in front of her face to block, and the other arm tucked to her side with the respective hand opened to catch. Knees bent, and weight shifting back and forth to keep her calves and thighs alert. She throws a confident look over to the monk, and tugs a smile that shows her downwards fang. “Don’t worry, I’ll actually fight you.”

//

Weishen adopts a more lighter stance now that she’s the one on the offensive. One where she can hide her intentions. Hands opened like talons to misguide whether she’s gonna utilize punches or grabs. She’ll start off with a kick though to test Aresina’s footwork. Not a fully committed kick though, but just enough to probe. Aresina’s sure to block it, regardless of how skilled she is, and for that Weishen can just have the warrior push back her leg back down to the ground where it belongs. What she does after is up to her, and Weishen will respond in kind.

So very kind.

She takes off towards the awaiting warrior.

//

Weishen’s pretty fast.

Although she does look very silly running with her arms stiffened like that. Like she’s got a crick in her back or something.

Aresina doesn’t get much time to giggle though as Weishen plants her foot down while swinging her other leg up towards Aresina’s head. The warrior throws the lower part of her forearm against the black ankle to counter it. Better to let her muscles absorb the spinning kick rather than her recently healed wrist, at least for a start.

The kick is much weaker than she planned for though, and the result is closer to Aresina hitting Weishen rather than the opposite. The tip of Weishen’s long hair cracks like a whip just in front of Aresina’s nose as the monk spins back from the recoil just as quick as she did for her kick.

//

What’s your counter, warrior? 

Come on, play your card.

Weishen lets her blocked leg speed past her, and she follows through with it by bending down to collect the energy for a second strike. She holds it for a second as she observes what Aresina wants to do. The warrior keeps her defensive stance though, resetting her arms in preparation.

Alright then. Weishen can work with that.

Like a spring, all the way from her heel of her foot, Weishen readjusts her stored force towards the heel of her palm that she throws against Aresina’s torso. Right between the warrior’s hands to see which one she uses to block with. Aresina deflects the punch to the side with her opened hand, but by doing so she opens herself up to Weishen. By deflecting the fist across her, the monk can now let herself gyrate on her toes from the angular momentum given to her by Aresina’s deflection.

And plant a sharp elbow into the warrior’s side. Weishen’s hair adds insult to injury as it hits a second time on where her elbow did. She catches the falling warrior’s limp arm over her shoulder, and throws her forward onto the ground where she lands flat on her back with a clenched cough followed by a groan.

“Oh don’t whine,” Weishen mock chastises as she gives Aresina her arm back which she uses to caress her side. “You landed on grass.”

“You sound like my master,” Aresina says through her teeth as she coughs out the last pain out of her. “He pushed me out of a hot air balloon though, so you better step it up with your next attack.”

Weishen squats down with a cocksure smile stretching her lips and mask. “I’m sure I can find it in me to let you call me master.”

She catches herself on her own words.

Did she really say that?

“How long has it been?” she whispers to herself.

//

Oh really?

Bold words for someone within arm’s reach!

Aresina hooks her arm behind Weishen’s bent knee, and before the monk can return to reality from her own murmur, Aresina rolls away with her flexed bicep dragging with it Weishen’s knee and leg. With the monk also down on the ground, Aresina scrambles up on her hands and feet before again lunging over Weishen.

One arm under the armpit, and the other around the neck.

Weight onto torso, legs spread out for better inertia.

And the monk’s locked in place.

“Making me agile didn’t really pan out for you, now did it!” Aresina cackles. She can feel her adrenaline beginning to take effect now. The music of her heart pounding inside her ears, and the rhythm of her heavy breathing tickling her nose and throat. The black feet closing in over her face and…

What?

//

“You have plenty of stretching to do before you even begin to think that you can defeat me!” Weishen cackles back as she tightens her crossed feet over the warrior’s face to force her to recoil back and up on one knee, allowing Weishen to cross her legs further until her calves are tightened around Aresina’s throat. The warrior keeps her arms fastened around Weishen’s lifted head though to keep her from wriggling loose. The two have each other locked tightly, and neither is giving up. “How long can you go without blood to your thick skull?”

Oh my... 

It’s been so long since Weishen’s spewed her words like this.

But she’s loving it!

Even with Aresina’s grip also tightening Weishen’s still smiling. It’s been too long since she’s been this down and dirtied. Like a rookie challenging a fellow initiate over a quabble. It’s so petty, but it’s also so real. Weishen’s done so much for others. She’s been there for so many. It’s time for her to do this for herself!

She’s lived as the water, but in this moment she is the rock for the water to crash into. The sweat pouring down her face is just as salty and wet as the roaring ocean during a storm. She’ll weather it though.

Like hell is this pebble of a warrior gonna defeat the Grandmaster Boulder!

//

“Why don’t you call upon the mists to help you breathe?” Aresina suggest while angling Weishen’s caught arm over her black and intensively staring mask so that she can clamp down with her foot on the monk’s free arm about to sneak in a punch. “Get some green on your red face before you turn blue.”

Her neck is pushed back by Weishen forcing her crossed legs down again. Aresina can see the monk’s toes and claws beginning to curl right in front of her chin. “Save your own breath, warrior!”

Actually, yes.

But first Weishen’s.

Aresina lets go of the monk’s neck, allowing her to throw Aresina backwards with all her might. As she falls, the warrior lifts up her chin so that the black-spotted legs slid off her throat, and pushes off with her feet into a backwards flip. 

It’s been a few years since she last tried to flip like this though, and she stumbles into a clumsy recovery as she ungracefully lands with too much an angle away from her center of gravity. 

She would’ve landed it if she’d still had her hair.

//

Weishen can’t help but laugh, but it’s a hoarse chuckle she expels, and she immediately tries to clear her throat while massaging it carefully. “You want another try at that?” she pesters towards the warrior with a battle-eager grin thinning her lips and baring her teeth.

“Shut up!” comes as an answer. Not in anger, but in playful spite. “I’m still in the lead with one point. I broke free from you this time, so that doesn’t count!”

Stubborn warrior! Then Weishen’s gonna have make doubly sure fully to earn two points with her next attack.

By Xuen, she is gonna regret not counting that as Weishen’s point!

But first.

//

Ooooohhhh!

Aresina can feel Weishen’s eagerness for the next attack all the way from where she is standing. It’s like her lust for battle is being transferred through the mists. Not as a threat, nor as a warning, but as a compliment. Aresina breathes in deeply, and feels herself becoming reinvigorated as the mists spreads out inside her. The stitched dragon on her shirt begins humming, and the blessing of Yu’lon rushes through her. “Can’t keep those itchy hands from healing, can you?” she shoots back to the monk while taking up a balanced stance.

Weishen closes her healing hands into combat-ready fists. “I want you fully aware for what comes next.”

And by Xuen, she is gonna regret that.

//

The two pandaren close the distance rapidly, each one jumping into a kick that connects on the other’s shoulder. Aresina catches her landing on her previously injured wrist without even a thought that it might hurt again, which brings a proud smile to Weishen’s lips. She immediately shifts her focus to the sweeping strike the warrior builds from her supported wrist, and lifts up her legs as she pushes up her upper body with her hands. As she lands on her feet, she brushes away an unruly fringe knocked loose by Aresina’s first tackle.

“Read like an open book, warrior.”

“Then get ready for the appendix!”

Aresina jabs at Weishen’s head, but the monk catches the wrist without a single movement to her head. “You melee’s always manage to injure yourself on the same spot immediately after.” She plants a threatening claw at Aresina’s wrist. “Don’t think I’m proud enough not to undo my work to teach you a lesson.”

The warrior responds by pushing one of her own claws at Weishen’s tendon visible at the bend of her black and white arm. “Can you heal yourself as good as you can another one?”

Both tug a smile at each other, and pull the other in for an embrace. They both pat the other’s back, and break off a few steps to reset. 

//

The spar begins anew by Weishen going on the offensive, repeatedly striking with her palms and elbows against Aresina’s. Each strike is blocked a moment later than the previous one though, and the warrior soon misses an elbow that wraps itself around her arm, bending it up into surrender. Weishen follows it through by taking a step inwards behind Aresina’s legs, and forcing the warrior to fall down. 

She kicks back Aresina’s attempt at sweeping the monk’s legs again, leaving the warrior no option but to tap the ground with her free arm. “Alright, alright,” she admits while rolling her twisted arm that Weishen lets loose. “One point to you.”

“Sometimes the best technique is the simplest one.” Weishen offers Aresina a hand to help her up on her feet. She weaves some mist around the warrior’s shoulder. “You of all-”

“Yes!” Aresina gets it! She pushes Weishen away, but can’t help her giggle from surfacing. “I get it. Sorry for trying to make it interesting for you, Grandmaster.” She makes sure to put too much emphasis on the title for it so sound genuine. 

“You have though,” comes a genuine answer. Weishen turns her head towards the wind, letting it gently caress the fur on her face as she smiles at it. “It’s been a while since I was challenged as an equal rather than a master and teacher.” She looks back at Aresina while putting her palm against her fist. “And for that, I wish to declare out sparring a draw, Battlelord.” She bows deeply. “This is a feeling I wish to savor.”

//

It’s good that Weishen realizes when to back off, and for that, Aresina bows back. “Your words are kind, Grandmaster.” This time around the title is genuine. “I do wish we could’ve gone a little while longer though. Perhaps make it two against two until we declare a draw?”

“Today is reaching its end.” Weishen points towards the setting sun just about to fade away behind the bell shrine. “And we still have some travel left to do back to Yu’lon’s temple for our stay. There’s always a tomorrow, and tomorrow we’ll do two against two.”

“Three against three the day after? My hearthstone’s broken, so I can’t really go anywhere else.” Aresina winks knowingly. “And you need to make sure my hair is growing properly, right?”

Weishen winks back. “We won’t get any sleep tonight, I’m afraid. I have a pupil at the temple that will be dying to hear some of your exaggerated stories, Battlelord.”

“Tomorrow is another day,” Aresina says as dramatically as she can while tugging at her throat to make her voice sound as deep as possible. It has her coughing afterwards. Despite her numerous battle-cries she’ll never get her voice as deep as a death knight’s.

It summons a childish laugh from Weishen, who nods in return. “That it is, death knight.” She beckons for Aresina to follow her as she walks over to the bell shrine.

“I could never fathom being a death knight,” Aresina says as she sits down next to Weishen on the side of the shrine facing the end of the blazing sunset. “Being dead means you don’t get hungry, and sating that need is the best feeling in the world.”

The Grandmaster puts her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “That we have in common, Aresina.”

The Battlelord puts her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “Then you better get started with Nomi, Weishen.”

//

Yeah, that she…

Oh wait!

“My armor! It’s-”

“Over there,” Aresina directs with a nod towards the pile of white robes at the corner behind the bell shrine.

“Oh, thanks.”

“No problem.”

“And also, would you mind my pupil, Li Li Stormstout, to hold your sword when we arrive at the temple?”

“Did you promise her that?”

“…Maybe.”

“I think I can find it in me to let her wield an actual weapon.”

“Well that’s very nice of you, Horde.”

“Right back at you, Alliance.”


End file.
